


someone's gonna cop it!

by dancinghopper



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, Happy Death Day AU, happy halloween folks!!!, i know it says major character death but dont worry it doesnt stick, psa i dont know if the violence should really be called graphic but like... better safe than sorry?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-01-15 03:50:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 45,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinghopper/pseuds/dancinghopper
Summary: “Jesus,” whines Toni, as Cheryl’s alarm blares. “Turn that ear-splitter off, would you?”Cheryl chucks the phone across the room -- it hits the wall and falls down into the hamper, muffling the sound. She's getting pretty good at that.“Say something different,” she bites back, and buries her head under the pillow.or; cheryl wakes up in toni's bed, goes to school, gets murdered, and wakes up in toni's bed again. and again. and again.





	1. friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hellooooooo ladies and gays. i was gonna do this as one big fic for halloween but predictably i didnt finish it in time so instead its coming out in chapters <333 its a blatant rip off of happy death day bc that movie was incredibly fun and i need more ppl to appreciate it. its not really horror bc the murder is sort of just a backdrop but hopefully u enjoy anyway!!

Cheryl’s a party girl. She knows this. Going out, drinking and dancing and getting everyone’s attention: it’s fun, and it actually makes her _feel _something. And people like her better when they’re drunk, so it’s a win-win. But of all the horrible, god-forsaken human creations Cheryl’s witnessed in her life (stick-on nails you can buy in the drugstore, coffee without sugar), cheap wine out of the bag is definitely the _worst_.

When she wakes up, the first thing she thinks is that her hair’s finally strangled her to death in her sleep. It’s so _heavy_, weighing down her entire head enough that even her ridiculously expensive pillow isn’t supporting her. And, _god_, her head’s _throbbing_, a horrible dull ache right between her temples, and the light is so _bright_. And did she eat a bag of cotton wool before bed? Her mouth tastes _disgusting_. She pushes her face harder into her pillow, drawing her duvet cover up and over her eyes.

_Wait_, she thinks, with a sudden overwhelming notion of dread taking up residence in her stomach. Her fingers snag on rough cotton rather than her silk sheets, and they smell like unfamiliar perfume rather than her laundry powder, and oh god, oh _no_ —

Her phone blares. Meekly, she pokes her head out from the bed, squinting against the bright light — too bright for her room, with its black out curtains — and fumbles for where the noise is coming from. Her fingers find purchase, and she’s about to hit silent when:

“Jesus, turn that ear-splitter off, would you?”

Cheryl feels nauseous. She hits silent, and blinks hard at the speaker. It’s a girl. God almighty, Cheryl went home with a _girl_.

The girl rattles the bottle of Tylenol in her hand, offers a glass of water with the other. A smile tugs at her lips. “Thought you could use these.”

She’s going to throw up. She glances around the room — messy bedsheets and drawers, dirty clothes piled on a chair (she _has_ a hamper, it’s _right there_), posters tacked up on the walls with tape.Southside Serpent jacket slung casually over the desk. Cheryl’s eyes rake over it all, and the girl’s smile starts to slip.

“I’m going to throw up,” says Cheryl, pushing herself off the bed and ignoring the girl’s panicked expression. She grabs the Tylenol, unscrewing the cap and pouring four into her hand. She swallows them, ignoring the spinning of her head, and says the only thing she can. “I slept with a _Southside Serpent?_”

It comes out harsh, brittle, and any kindness in her one night stand’s face disappears. Cheryl shoves the water and pills back into her hands.

“Wow,” she says, flat, “Nice.”

Cheryl pulls a face at her — she tries to roll her eyes, but halfway through decides she can’t be bothered, because it makes her head want to explode. Her eyes lock onto her skirt where it’s crumpled on the floor, and she reaches down to tug it back on. She pulls the oversized tee she’s wearing over her head, chucks it on the chair with the dirty clothes, and puts her own top back on. It’s red and lacy and so, _so_ obviously from the night before that it makes her cringe.

“Shoes,” she says hoarsely, clicking her fingers. Both of the girl’s eyebrows shoot up.

“_Excuse_ me?”

There’s the sound of a door somewhere else in the house opening and closing, but Cheryl’s too busy fishing around in all the mess for her shoes to care.

“_Yo, Toni_,” comes the call, as Cheryl finds one of her stilettos and slips it onto her foot. The voice gets progressively closer, male and rough and _not good_ for her hangover induced headache. “_Please tell me you didn’t end up sleeping with that bitc_—“

Toni’s door opens on the last word, some other rouge tumbling in, the same stupid jacket thrown over his shoulders. Cheryl’s mood sours even more.

“And, you did,” says the guy, faltering only slightly at Cheryl’s glare.

“Dude,” hisses Toni, and shoves at him. “What the fuck?”

Cheryl grabs her other shoe and slams past them both.

“Do not fucking tell anyone about this,” she snaps, “Or I’ll ruin your fucking life.”

And she leaves.

***

She gets outside — of the _trailer,_ she spent the night in a _trailer_, she’s gonna have to take so many showers just to get the _stench_ of poor off her — and she’s in the fucking Southside. Maybe a given, considering the jackets, but this just cannot get any worse. She pulls her other stiletto on and sets off on a shaky walk, because her heels keep digging into the gravel and threatening to snap her ankles. Some loser in a truck whistles as he passes her by.

“_Shut up!_,” hisses Cheryl under her breath, glancing nervously around. She can’t be seen here. In the distance, a car alarm blares. Jesus, she really _can’t_ be seen here. She’ll get mugged.

Veronica answers on the second ring, because she’s a godsend who doesn’t sleep in even if it’s the night after her birthday party.

“Baby girl!” she coos, delightful, and Cheryl winces. “How was your night?”

“How in all sweet hell are you so cheerful?” snaps Cheryl, bypassing the question entirely, and Veronica giggles.

“Breakfast mimosas,” she says. “Can’t have a hangover if you’re still drunk!”

Cheryl scowls, and debates sitting on the curb, but then she’d look even trashier than she already does. “Well goody for you. I need you to come get me. Now.”

Veronica stops giggling, though her voice retains it’s sing-song quality. “Are you alright?”

“No!” yells Cheryl, stomping her foot. Maybe it’s petulant, but who the fuck cares — she just woke up in a stranger’s bed, in the dodgiest end of town, and she looks like a cheap hooker. “No, Veronica, I’m not fucking alright, I’m stuck in the fucking Southside and I need you to come and pick me up ten minutes ago!”

Veronica is silent for a second. “Magic word, Cheryl,” she prompts.

“Ronnie—“ she says, and her voice breaks on the word, which is so embarrassing. She feels like she’s about to cry. “I’m gonna have a damn panic attack if you don’t come and get me.”

“Alright,” says Veronica, though it’s kind of a sigh. “Sit tight, okay? I’m literally leaving right now.”

“Thank you,” breathes Cheryl. She _is_ grateful, even if her tone doesn’t sound it. She hangs up and eyes the curb again, eventually giving in to sit down. It’s so dirty that she really does burst into tears.

Fifteen minutes later and a car that is definitely _not_ Veronica’s pulls up, although the pearl bracelet-adorned hand hanging out the passenger window certainly is. Ronnie leans her head out as the car parks, looking like she’s drunk about as much as Cheryl but hasn’t realised it yet.

“_Girl_,” she says, grin wide on her face. She’s make-up free and has circles under her eyes, but she’s in jeans and a sweater rather than last night’s clothes, so she doesn’t look all that bad. Betty is with her, driving because of course she is, and looking way too smug for Cheryl’s liking. “What happened to _you?_”

“Shut up, Veronica,” says Cheryl, and dusts off her skirt. She climbs into the backseat of Betty’s shitty Volvo. “Did you have to bring my Smurfette cousin over there?”

Betty glares at her, turning round in her seat. “This is _my_ car! Be grateful someone’s here to pick you up and you don’t have to go to school looking like that!”

Betty looks perfect, because of course she does. The collar poking out of her sweater looks like it’s been freshly ironed, and she doesn’t look like six hours ago she was grinding against Veronica in a seedy club. Cheryl closes her eyes and leans her head against the window. “Why the _hell_ did you have a party on a school night?” she asks.

Veronica lets out a whine. “It was my _birthday_.”

***

“Here,” says Betty icily, pulling up outside Cheryl’s house. Or, like, nearby it. She probably purposefully parked a few houses down so Cheryl would have to walk further in her heels. “You’re welcome.”

Cheryl pulls her head off the window, and peels off the clump of hair that had stuck to her forehead. “What for?”

Betty nostrils flare. “For — god, for nothing, _whatever_. Just get out of my car.”

Cheryl arches her eyebrow half-heartedly. “Geez, okay. Someone forgot to take their pill.”

She watches Betty’s knuckles tighten around the wheel with satisfaction. Stupid Betty. Why Veronica’s even dating her she’ll never know.

“That’s enough, Cheryl,” says Veronica, and it sounds like the high from her morning mimosa might be wearing off. “We’ll see you at school.”

She scoffs. “Um, no. Like hell am I going to school today.”

Betty’s jaw clicks, she’s squeezing it so tightly. It’d be hilarious if Cheryl’s head didn’t hurt so bad. “It’s the pep rally today,” Betty says, stiffly. “You’ve threatened the rest of us with bodily harm for missing _rehearsals_.”

Cheryl groans. “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw. Your birthday turned out to be really freakin’ inconvenient, Veronica.”

Veronica sighs, rubbing her eyes. “_She’s your friend, she’s your friend, she’s your friend_,” she mutters under her breath, like a mantra, and maybe it does sting a little, or maybe it’s just the Tylenol wearing off. Who knows.

“See you at school, Cheryl,” says Veronica at normal volume, and Cheryl huffs, extracting herself from the tiny car. It’s nice to have pavement under her feet again rather than pot-hole riddled roads. She’s so glad she lives on the rich side of town.

She blows them a kiss as Betty drives away, and sees Veronica rolls her eyes through the window.

Well, fine. Cheryl doesn’t need them, anyway.

***

She takes another two pills, and makes her way through her classes in a daze. It’s not like she needs to pay attention, since she always tries to be one week ahead on the readings — she already knows most of this week’s content. Maintaining that 4.0 is _hard, _so she can slack off just this once. She thinks about driving to Pop’s during her lunch period to pick up some fries and a burger since she hasn’t eaten all day, but then talks herself out of it, given that the thought of putting _anything_ in her mouth right now makes her want to puke.

Anyway, she’s in the bathroom washing her hands when she finds out that her one night stand is _stalking_ her.

“Hey, Cheryl?” she asks, and Cheryl nearly jumps in surprise when she glances up at the mirror, because it _is_ the girl. It’s the girl from this morning, with the pink hair, and she’s got her bag slung over one shoulder and something clutched tight in her hand. Cheryl didn’t even know she went to this school. Why isn’t she over with her Southside chums at SS High? Unless...

“Are you following me?” hisses Cheryl, spinning around from the sink on her heel. The girl scoffs, rolling her eyes.

“Don’t flatter yourself. I just came to give you this.”

She holds out her hand, palm up. Cheryl’s spider brooch sits neatly on top of it.

“Oh,” says Cheryl, and takes it. She flicks her hair over her shoulder so she can pin it to her top. “I’m surprised you didn’t take it straight to the pawn shop.”

“Right,” says the girl. “I’m from the Southside, so I must steal stuff from people all the time.”

Cheryl raises her eyebrows, and looks her up and down. Cheap jeans, ratty combat boots. Six trillion necklaces all tarnished from wear, probably from Target or somewhere else cheap.

“If the shoe fits,” she says, and gives her a simpering smile. “Pray, why _aren’t_ you over there with all your little criminal pals? Please tell me you didn’t come all this way to give me my brooch.”

The girls pulls a face. “Uh, I literally _go_ here. I’m in your English class. Toni Topaz.”

Cheryl squints at her. Maybe she does look familiar. Cheryl’s just never paid her much attention, because… “You’re one of Jughead’s friends.”

Toni twiddles her fingers. “Ta da.”

She gets this weird, devilish look in her eye (is it _flirty?_ No, it can’t be, Cheryl’s being a _bitch_) and reaches out to tweak Cheryl’s brooch, fingers brushing lightly against her. Cheryl’s breath hitches in her throat.

“There,” says Toni, like she knows what she’s doing to her, her hand lingering. “And now I guess we’re done. No risk of anyone finding out about our ‘rendezvous’.”

Cheryl stands there for another second, looking dumbly at Toni’s fingers hovering over the brooch, and then slaps her hand away.

“Get your sapphic, _Serpent_ hands off me,” she hisses harshly, shouldering past her and out of the bathroom. “And get the hell out of my life.”

***

The rest of the day goes by in a daze, classes and people moving by with no real input from her. After school, her and the Vixens stay behind to prep for Pep Rally — last minute rehearsals and scheduling changes, changing into their uniforms, things like that. She makes Ginger lead the Vixens through a yoga routine rather than practice the cheerleading set, which she feels a little better after. The footballers are out on the field doing warm-up, and Archie comes up to her while she’s filling her drink bottle at the water fountain.

“Hey, Cheryl,” he says, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. Cheryl wrinkles her nose at it. “Big night?”

“Maybe for you,” she says snippily, screwing the lid back on. Archie makes a sympathetic face.

“Hangover, huh? You should try Pop’s breakfast burger. Guaranteed cure.”

Cheryl glares at him. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

She stalks back over to the change rooms to get ready. Betty and Veronica don’t talk to her, but that’s just fine. She just has to get through this day, and then she can go home and sleep all weekend, catch up on the classes she drifted aimlessly through.

Cheryl finishes the start and half-time sets with no real idea how she does it, working on auto-pilot. It’s a good thing she drilled these routines so mercilessly into the girls, they’re able to carry it off at least half-decently without her input. As soon as they let her down from the pyramid she heads off, needing to sit down but refusing to look weak in front of them — she runs for the girls locker room across the oval, panting and out of breath by the time she gets there.

She rummages around her bag for her water bottle, skulling several gulps down and willing her head to stop spinning. Her stomach churns, and she rushes for the bathroom, promptly throwing it all back up. Exercise on an empty stomach when she really should have known better — what is she, an _amateur_? She sits down on the grotty floor and leans back against the tiles, dropping her head between her knees. The locker room door clangs. Probably one of the cheerleaders, maybe Veronica, wanting to catch a glimpse of Cheryl when she’s down. Boo fucking who.

She breathes in and out with harsh, deliberate breaths like she’s working through a tough set at the gym. Footfalls echo through the bathroom, whoever it is obviously looking for her.

“If that’s you with an I-told-you-so, Veronica, then you can just shut it,” she calls loudly, spots in her eyes.

There’s no answer, so Cheryl lifts her head, opening her eyes. Two large boots, obviously male, are outside her stall.

“Coach Clayton?” she guesses. “I’m fine, don’t worry. I’ll be back out for the final set.”

The feet don’t move. Something cold and sinister prickles at the back of her neck. It’s still silent. She swallows.

“Listen, Ragamuffin,” she says, a slight nervous tremor in her voice. She read somewhere that public bathrooms are one of the most likely places for sexual assault. “I’m puking my breakfast up here, give a girl some privacy.”

The boots stay put for a moment, deathly still, and then they turn and walk away. Cheryl breathes out. God. She thought for a second — well, it’s stupid. No need get all high-strung about it, like she’s freaked out by some mute weirdo. She stands up, blood pounding in her ears, and flicks the lock of the stall with a shaking hand.

When it isn’t immediately forced open, she forces herself to peer out. No-one. She sighs.

“Get it together,” she hisses at herself, and starts to leave. “Jesus.”

The knife comes at her from the left, from inside one of the stalls. She _sees_ it, sees the arm it’s attached to swing out in front of her, and it pierces her chest and the pain flares — and god, it fucking _hurts_ — and then —

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i would die for bitchy cheryl. happy spooks everyone!! xxx


	2. friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> acting like im going to post a chapter a day is probably a _little_ optimistic but.... a girl can dream
> 
> thank u sm for the responses on the last chapter!! its so nice to have ppl reading and enjoying this fic XX

— Cheryl gasps, a ragged breath like she’s just emerged from the water, and bolts upright. Her hand flies to her breast bone instinctively, clawing at the wound, and there’s a shrill ringing in her ears. She’s _dead_, she _died_—

“Jesus,” says Toni, breaking through the noise, “Turn that ear-splitter off, would you?”

Cheryl looks up, and there she is — Toni. Standing over the bed. Cheryl stares at her, her brain trying valiantly to wake up from the panic — from the _sleep, _from the _dream_. Toni looks exactly as she did yesterday, in yoga pants and a tank top, her hair pushed back with a headband. There’s water and a bottle of Tylenol in her hands. _Weird_. Catching her looking, Toni offers them to her.

“Oh, yeah,” she says, smiling slightly, “I thought you could use these. You were drinking a _lot_.”

Dimly, Cheryl takes them. It’s all so _familiar_, it was all so _real_. Her hands shake as she empties two out, and she remembers reaching for the door of the toilet stall as clear as if it were a few seconds ago. She puts the glass of water down on the bedside table, and then tries to stand up, her vision swimming.

“Woah,” says Toni, catching her as she stumbles. Her hands are warm and soft. She pushes Cheryl upright. “Still got the spins, huh?”

Cheryl shakes her head. “My clothes…”

She glances down — her skirt is crumpled at her feet, her shirt too, but they’re the ones from two nights ago, that she wore to Veronica’s party. What the _hell?_ She pulls them both on, as Toni reaches down to grab Cheryl’s stilettos, handing them to her.

“So, listen,” she starts to say, but whatever it is goes completely over Cheryl’s head, because from outside the room —

“_Yo, Toni! _Please _tell you didn’t end up sleeping with that bitc—_“

The guy from yesterday swings open the door, faltering slightly as he sees her. “And, you did.”

“Dude,” hisses Toni, and shoves at him, trying to get him back out of the room. “What the fuck?”

“I,” says Cheryl, because this is _seriously_ creepy now. She could’ve _sworn_ she knew that was going to happen. She grabs her keys off the desk, heels tucked under her arm. “I have to go.”

She pushes past them, ignoring Toni’s apologies, and leaves.

***

When she gets outside, she’s in the exact same area as yesterday, still stuck in the freakin’ Southside, and she’s losing it. The trailer’s the same, the damn _street_ is the same, she gets cat-called by the _same fucking guy in the truck_. With jittery hands — because if it’s all the same, if it’s _all_ the same, then what about the guy in the bathroom? Is she gonna get freaking _murdered_? — she pulls out her phone and dials Veronica, who picks up on the second ring because she’s literally God’s gift to the earth.

“Baby girl!” coos Veronica, and Cheryl winces at the volume, pulling the phone away from her ear. “How was your night?”

“I think I’m on a bad trip,” says Cheryl, slightly desperately. “I’m trapped in the Southside and I think I’m going crazy and I need you to come and pick me up, like, ten minutes ago.”

Veronica giggles. “Um, _what_?”

Cheryl presses her free hand to her chest, sitting down on the sidewalk. Her ribs ache under her touch. “Ronnie, I think Reggie gave me some Jingle Jangle or fucking _something_ and it’s really messing with my system and I _need_ you to come and get me. I’m on the edge of a damn panic attack.”

A sigh travels over the phone. “Okay, don’t freak out, alright? I’m literally leaving right now to come and get you. Just sit tight, okay?”

“Thank you,” breathes Cheryl, sounding a little more grateful than she did yesterday. Or in her weird, trip-induced bad dream. Because that’s all it was, that’s all it _could_ have been, because Veronica’s going to show up in fifteen minutes in her dad’s car and not Betty’s crappy hatchback, because Cheryl _imagined_ it all.

“Oh my god,” says Cheryl, fifteen minutes later, as the Volvo pulls round the corner. “Oh my god, no.”

Veronica sticks her head out the window, waving. Her pearl bracelet catches in the light. “_Girl_,” she calls, sounding kind of drunk, “What happened to _you_?”

Cheryl clambers into the back seat, feeling dizzy. “Why are you so _cheerful_? Didn’t you do, like, six body shots off Smurfette over there?”

She nods towards Betty, who glowers at her. “Hey! This is _my_ car, be grateful someone’s here to pick you up and you don’t have to go to school looking like that!”

“Yeah, Cheryl,” says Veronica. “Be nice to Betty.”

She twists in her seat, grinning. “And I’m so _cheerful_ because _I_, unlike the rest of you losers, am still drunk. Can’t have a hangover if you didn’t stop drinking!”

Something churns in Cheryl’s stomach, and it’s not the alcohol. “Breakfast mimosas?” she guesses, faintly. Veronica nods, shooting a pair of finger guns her way.

“Got ‘em in one, babe.”

***

They pull up on Cheryl’s street a couple of houses down, the same place as yesterday. Betty meets her eye in the rear-view mirror.

“Here,” she says, “You’re welcome.”

“Thanks,” says Cheryl. Just looking at the house makes her want to be sick, and she feels all cold and clammy, goosebumps on her skin. She must look pretty bad, too, because Betty’s eyebrows furrow.

“You okay, Cheryl? Reggie didn’t really give you something, did he?”

She actually sounds concerned, which is so annoying. If Betty would only hate her like she’s supposed to, then maybe Cheryl wouldn’t have to put so much effort into making up for it.

“I don’t know,” she says, and looks up at her house. “I think I’ll just go sleep it off.”

Betty and Veronica exchange looks. “It’s the pep rally today,” Betty says eventually, “Remember?”

The pep rally. _God_. “That wasn’t yesterday?”

Veronica laughs. “Um, no?”

“Fuck,” whispers Cheryl, and unbuckles her seatbelt. “God, Ronnie, your birthday was annoying enough when it only happened once a year.”

She gets out of the car, a little unsteady on her feet and ignoring whatever responses the two of them have to that little comment. She blows them a half-hearted kiss as they drive away — yesterday (or in her dream, or premonition, or whatever) it’d been to annoy Betty, but today it’s just because... well, whatever, maybe for the same reason. It’s just a weird day, and annoying Betty makes her feel kind of better.

She goes inside and takes a shower, scrubbing the night before off her skin until she’s pink all over. She almost decides to skip school, but that would be ridiculous. Based on _what?_ A bad dream? She has bad dreams all the time, if she took a sick day for all of them her G.P.A. would plummet. Even though she knows she should pay attention to her classes, she doesn’t, because she can’t stop thinking about Toni, and the bathroom, and her spider brooch. She’d forgotten it this morning, which should be freaky, another suggestion that her dream was a just a little too on the nose. But maybe — hopefully — her mind is now just flat out inventing details it thinks should be there. Like, she’s misplaced her spider brooch, so the conclusion her brain’s reached is that obviously Toni must have it, and it’s tricking her into thinking she dreamed it. That must be it.

She half-heartedly listens to Mrs Davidson drone _on _and _on_ about the merits of Dickens’ writing style, completely zoning out as she thinks about how hungry she is. She’d eaten a banana that morning, even though she didn’t want it, and it must have awakened something in her because now she doesn’t so much feel nauseous as she does absolutely ravenous for food. So she deviates from the dream.

In her lunch period, rather than sticking it out at school, she drives over to Pop’s and buys a burger. And some fries. And a milkshake. It’s greasy and disgusting and also _so_ fucking good. She gets another serve of fries to take with her back to school, and snacks on them the whole drive there.

It’s only once she gets back that she realises she missed Toni in the bathroom, but that’s fine. She’s actually relieved. She can’t even remember now if she was _wearing_ the spider brooch, anyway. She probably wasn’t. It’s probably in her jewellery box at home.

She walks to the oval after school almost cheery, the food having perked her right up — incredibly, her headache’s almost gone. She’s the first there (she always is, _honestly_, is she the only one on this damn squad with an ounce of _dedication_?), so she does a few stretches to warm up. It is, embarrassingly, when she’s in downward dog that Toni decides to make her presence known.

“Huh,” she says, loudly, and _approvingly_. “Maybe now I get the whole cheerleader thing.”

Cheryl stands and turns, hoping that the upside down position she was in is a good enough cover for the burning of her cheeks, and fixes her with a disdainful look. “What a surprise. The criminal’s got a crass mouth to match.”

Toni’s gaze, which _had_ been light and teasing, sours, and she looks kind of — hurt? It’s gone in an instant, replaced with something more mocking as she crosses her arms and shifts her weight back onto her hip.

“What a surprise,” she drawls back, hitching an eyebrow. “HBIC lives up to the name.”

Cheryl snorts at that one, and reaches for her drink bottle. “What do you want? Surely you didn’t ditch whatever law-breaking scheme you had planned just to come and see _moi?_”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” says Toni. She reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls out the brooch. It catches in the afternoon light, glinting gold as she holds it out to her. “Here. You left it on my bedside table.”

Instinctively Cheryl glances around for anyone who could have heard that comment, but there’s nobody around except the footballers way out on the field. A group of Vixens are on their way over, but Cheryl’s still got five minutes.

“I’m surprised you didn’t pawn it,” she says, weakly. Toni rolls her eyes.

“Right. I’m from the Southside, so I must steal stuff all the time.”

“If the shoe fits,” says Cheryl. She looks at the brooch sitting flat on Toni’s outstretched palm, and reaches out to take it. Her fingertips brush against Toni’s skin — it's the lightest of touches, but it still burns, and the moment feels just as charged and loaded as it did before, like it means something, only Cheryl doesn’t know what. She swallows.

“Thank you,” she says. Toni shrugs. “Now, scram, I have a rehearsal to run.”

Toni gives her a little mock salute, and dutifully saunters away. Cheryl watches her ass as she goes, because apparently one night of drinking and a fucked up premonition makes her forget all the self preservation techniques she’s been employing when it comes to keeping her raging lesbianism _under fucking wraps_.

“Hi Cheryl,” calls Veronica as the group approaches, waving. “Who was that?”

“No one," snaps Cheryl. "My drug dealer.”

Veronica laughs. “Sure, hon.”

She makes them all run drills.

***

The opening and half-time sets go off without a hitch, just as perfectly as she’d forced them to be in rehearsals. The game is going well, Bulldogs winning, but the instant they let her off the pyramid Cheryl thinks she’s gonna hurl. Why the fuck did she have all that food at lunch? Her milkshake is sloshing around in her stomach, her burger feels like it’s already halfway back up her throat. It’s such a rookie mistake (what is she, an _amateur?_), though she thinks that maybe if she sits down for a minute with her head between her knees it’ll pass, but as if she’s gonna do that in front of the whole school where everyone can see.

She eyes the locker rooms across the oval, thinks about making a run for it, and then decides: _Fuck no_. She’s not getting murdered today.

She heads back into the school halls via a side door down by the science block, the closest entry point to the bleachers. Technically it’s a fire escape, emergencies only, but literally everyone who’s on a sports team uses it to save walking an extra two hundred yards, so it’s always unlocked. Inside, the hall has that weird creepiness public spaces always have when they're deserted, especially since none of the lights are on. It’s like walking through a ghost town.

Cheryl sets off for the girl’s bathroom by Mr Evans’ room, and about halfway there she hears the fire door clang open and shut again. When she pauses, though, she can’t hear footsteps — and the linoleum floors echo, so she should be able to. Maybe it was the wind. She probably just didn’t shut it right.

She hurries for the bathroom and chugs some water from the tap, the sits down for a few minutes next to the sink. All the stalls are open and empty, _not_ that she was looking, but she stays out of them, feeling weirdly déjà vu about it all. Eventually she stands and decides to make her way back to the game, because it must nearly be time for the final set.

As she’s heading down the hallway (maybe walking faster than necessary, so what, her brother was fucking murdered and she doesn’t want to end up the same), she hears a squeak, like a shoe on vinyl. Then a door. She freezes.

Because she’s not some dumb bitch in a horror movie, she doesn’t call out. Instead she stops walking, and she listens. Footsteps. She turns around. There’s no one there, but at the end of the hallway — no. She imagined it. That’s a thing, right? Seeing things you expect to see? Because she’d swear she saw —

Cheryl takes a step backward. Then another one. Then she decides that she’s being ridiculous, but that it’s better to be ridiculous than dead, and starts to jog her way back to the fire door, attempting to talk herself down from whatever brand of crazy she’s indulging in tonight. It’s been ages since Archie’s dad got shot in the diner. Ages since some lunatic took pot shots at Moose and Midge. So what if she had a dream about being murdered? That’s practically par for the course. It doesn’t fucking mean anything. And even if Riverdale _did_ have a serial killer, why the hell would they kill her here, with a bunch of parents and students practically around the corner?

There’s a weird moment, when she reaches the fire door and it doesn’t open, when she knows with a clear, chilling clarity that she’s about to fucking die.

“No,” she hisses, rattling the handle. “_No, no, no_.”

She whips her head around, half expecting the freaking Black Hood to be behind her, but the hallway’s still empty, even though it’s multiplied by about a thousand in sinisterness.

“Shit,” Cheryl says, and gets out her phone. No service. “Oh, _fuck_.”

And then — it’s terrifying, actually, because one second the hallway’s empty and then the next she’s looking up and he’s _there_. In the fucking _mask_, just like Archie and Moose had described, but instead of a gun it’s a knife. It doesn’t glint, doesn’t catch the light, but it’s big and mean-looking and sharp. She knows, in her bones, that it’s sharp. Cheryl’s chest hurts. Her breaths are coming out shallow and fast.

“I’m warning you,” she says, hand still clenched around the door handle. “This isn’t fucking funny.”

The Black Hood takes a step towards her. Then another. And another and another and another, like he isn’t even worried about her trying to run. Like he’s _confident_ that he’s got her. Cheryl kind of feels like she leaves her body — he’s advancing, and the next second, without thinking about it, she _lurches_, ducking to the side with a sudden burst of energy, and darting forwards.

The hand not holding the knife grabs her just as she passes, and Cheryl shrieks, kicking out blindly. She gets the side of his knee and he grunts, stumbling forward but grasp not letting up. She hits his shoulder, twists her arm desperately, but he’s bigger than her and it’s useless. The knife clatters to the floor. Cheryl rams her elbow into his side, but he’s got a hold of her hair and she can’t get out. He slams her against the lockers, which _hurts_, a _clang_ erupting as the back of her head collides with the metal. Her vision swims, and his hands wrap around her neck, her nails digging into them as she tries to pry them off her. Her chest hurts, and she can’t see, and she feels like she’s drowning, drowning, _drowning_, like she’s under Sweetwater River all over again, and then —

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is it, like, annoying that they all end with cheryl dying? it just feels like the natural place to break em up. anyhow. thank u for reading and hope u enjoyed!!x


	3. friday

— Jason’s there, floating, and he’s looking at her. His body is mangled, the water reflects off his skin in yellow patches, and he’s looking at her and she’s looking at him and the water is _everywhere_, in her throat and her lungs and she can’t breathe, she can’t _breathe_, but she _is_ breathing, what the _fuck_ —

“Jesus, turn that— _woah_, hey, are you alright?”

When Cheryl opens her eyes, it's morning and she's still in Toni's room. She breathes in and out in short ragged breaths that make her chest heave violently — she’s already rocketed into a sitting position, and her hands are fisted iron-tight in the sheets, and Toni’s standing over the bed with water and a bottle of Tylenol. And Cheryl’s is alarm ringing in the background.

“What the fuck,” she hisses, and scrambles out of bed. Her legs get twisted in the sheets and she almost trips, throwing her hand out onto Toni’s bedside table for balance. “What the fuck what the fuck?”

“Wow, nice,” says Toni flatly, as Cheryl grabs for her skirt. It’s right where she knew it would be, crumpled up by her feet, what the _fuck_. She pulls it over her hips, grabs her keys and phone from the table and pushes past Toni into the hallway. It’s daunting, too narrow with horrid dark walls that loom over her, suffocating her, and nothing’s staying in focus, the world a blur of colour and _fear_. She runs to the front door, wrenching it open with a smack and fleeing the trailer. She almost runs right into Toni’s early morning gentleman caller as she turns onto the main road, and nearly screams. She’s forgotten her shoes, and the ground is fucking _cold_ under her bare feet, her toes turning purple. She pulls out her phone, clumsily scrolling her contacts.

“Baby girl!” coos Veronica when she answers, and Cheryl bursts into tears.

“Veronica,” she cries, clutching at the lump in her throat. Her nails scratch on her skin, leaving angry red lines, and suddenly she wonders if there are fingerprint bruises to match. “Veronica, I’m going fucking crazy.”

“Cheryl?” says Veronica, tinny over the phone, sounding panicked, which is fair because Cheryl _never_ cries, at least not in front of her, “Cheryl, honey, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

She says something else, maybe to Betty — of course they’re together right now, _of course_, Cheryl’d never actually given it any thought either of the other times — but Cheryl can’t stop sobbing for long enough to answer.

“Cheryl,” says Veronica again, louder, “Cheryl, babe, you gotta tell me where you are, okay? I’m literally leaving right now to come get you.”

***

Veronica practically throws herself out of the car when they turn up, and Cheryl welcomes it, wrapping her arms around Veronica tight enough to bruise. Veronica runs her hands over her hair, stroking it down, and murmurs platitudes into her ear. She’s so _warm_. And Cheryl’s being _so_ disgusting, with all her crying, and her gross hyper-ventilating, and Betty is staring at her wide-eyed and god that is _so_ fucking embarrassing. As if perfect Betty needs any more ammunition for what a fuck up she is.

“Come on, let’s get in the car, okay?” says Veronica, and Cheryl follows her. They both get into the backseat, Cheryl tucking her legs up under herself to keep her feet warm. Veronica swipes under her eyes, thumbs coming away black with mascara.

“B, are we okay to sit here for a bit?” she asks, softly. “I’ll give you gas money.”

“It’s fine,” says Betty, and cranks up the heater, the engine rumbling. For a moment Cheryl almost doesn’t hate her. Ronnie encircles her hands with her own,

“Honey,” she says, “What’s happened? Who’s shirt is that?”

Cheryl blinks at her, and then down at herself. She forgot that she hadn’t grabbed her top, and instead she’s in Toni’s oversized tee. It’s purple with a faded logo on the front, maybe for some sports brand. The sleeves are fraying around the edges.

“It’s Toni’s,” whispers Cheryl, and Veronica’s eyes flicker.

“And this Tony, huh?” she says, squeezing her hands and exchanging a concerned look with Betty. “Is he the reason you’re giving me a heart attack right now?”

Cheryl thinks, vaguely, about correcting her, but decides not to. “No. That’s not — that’s nothing to do with it. I just — I had a bad dream.”

No response. Cheryl stares at their hands. Veronica knows about her nightmares, about _Jason_, knows that she has dreams where Jason grabs her and drags her down deep into Sweetwater River, until everything’s black and she’s supposed to be dead but she’s _not, _trapped in limbo forever.

“Um,” says Veronica, letting out a shaky breath. “Sorry, what?”

“I had —" Cheryl feels herself tear up again. “A bad dream. But it wasn’t — Ronnie, I’m serious, okay, it was fucking _scary_, I got _murdered_, and I dreamed I was living this day _over and over_ and I think maybe it _wasn’t a dream!_”

Her voice goes terrified and high pitched at the end, finally lifting her head to meet Veronica’s eyes.

“Jesus,” says Veronica, and laughs a little, “Jesus, _Cheryl!_ I was so scared, what the hell?”

“I’m not kidding,” says Cheryl, voice hoarse. “I’ve already woken up in Toni’s stupid trailer _twice_, and then I go to school and I do the pep rally and then I get murdered by the freakin’ Black Hood!”

Veronica looks concerned, but not like she buys it. She looks at Betty again, and god, Cheryl’ll never stop being jealous over how they can just read each other’s minds. Betty puts the car into drive, and Veronica pats her hand consolingly.

“Okay, well,” she says, “You know that not possible, right? Did Reggie give you any drugs last night? Anything that might have messed with your head a bit?”

Cheryl rips her hand away, scowling. “No, I didn’t do any freaking Jingle Jangle. I thought I did yesterday, but then I woke up here _again_ and it’s _still_ today!”

Veronica looks at her like she’s crazy, so Cheryl racks her brain for info, because there must be something she can say to convince her. “Mimosas!" she cries, desperately. "Breakfast mimosas! You had one, right?”

Veronica’s face creases up. “Cher, I’m sorry, I didn’t.” She lets out an exhausted sounding laugh. “Kind of sounds like a good idea, though.”

“But that’s…” whispers Cheryl, and then thinks about it. She left Toni’s earlier than usual, had called Veronica quicker. Was that enough time? Could she have called Veronica _before_ she decided that staying drunk was the plan to go with? She puts her head in her hands.

“Oh, this is the worst,” she says, and then nothing else. They drive back to her house in silence, Veronica rubbing circles on her back and having silent conversations with Betty via the rear view mirror while Cheryl stares out the window, rearranging her day in her head. She’s gonna die at the Pep Rally. Fine. She just won’t freakin’ go.

“Okay, we’re here,” says Betty, pulling up outside Cheryl’s house. _Actually_ outside her house, too, which is different. Betty must be feeling too sorry for her to try and purposefully irritate her. Poor, crazy Cheryl with her poor, crazy brain. “Maybe you should take the day off, you don’t look so good. Reggie didn’t really give you something, did he?”

Cheryl shakes her head. “I’m not missing school because of some stupid dream,” she snaps, even though her hands tremble when she reaches for the door handle. “And you better not be bailing on the Pep Rally because of some lousy hangovers.”

Veronica rubs her arm, concerned. “We’ll be there. At least consider skiving off class though, okay? You could probably use the sleep.”

“Sleep is for the weak,” says Cheryl sourly, and gets out of the car. She slams the door shut, and stalks up the drive to her house. “And I’m not fucking weak.”

***

She takes her shower and several Tylenol, because her head is _killing_ her without the benefit of Toni’s foresight. Maybe the Serpent isn’t so bad — offering painkillers without being asked to your one night stand is kind of chivalrous, if she thinks about it the right way. And they’re expensive, and Toni probably doesn’t have a lot of money (unless she _is_ dealing drugs, which she might be, she’s in a _gang_) so Cheryl should maybe start being nicer to her in the mornings. Assuming this is gonna be a consistent thing.

“You’re fucking crazy,” she says to herself in the mirror, half way through doing her lipstick. She looks it, too, with only her top lip done in blood red. “A consistent — who are you, Bill fucking Murray?”

She kind of wishes someone had been around to hear that one. She’s a gift wasted on a precious few. Anyway — Cheryl finishes her makeup and goes to school because she doesn’t know what else to do. Veronica hadn’t believed her, _Betty_ hadn’t believed her, and it’s embarrassing (and sad, _god_, she’s so _desperate_) but she doesn’t really have anyone else. So what, though? She’ll just, like, have to decide how to escape getting murdered by herself. That’s fine. Maybe she’ll just lock herself in her house.

She racks her brain all day, trying to remember what class Toni said she was in. She’s pretty much the only interesting thing about today, the only thing that makes it special (bar the obvious, you know, _murder thing_), so this had _better_ not be some great cosmic way of making her come out of the closet. She’ll throw rocks. She looks for her in the halls, but she only spots the guy, tall and with the Serpent logo blazoned across his back. She’s not exactly desperate enough to go ask.

She’s being so jittery, and people are noticing, keep giving her the side eye and winks like they know something. It’s freaking her out. She’s trying to pretend like it’s fine — like waking up in a horror version of a 90s rom com is no biggie — but it fucking isn’t. She can still feel the hands around her neck, still feel the knife lodged in her chest. She jumps at the tiniest of noises, at the clang of the locker next to hers, and every time she looks round she swears, _swears_ she sees that stupid black mask out of the corner of her eye.

“Hey,” says Veronica, catching her arm in the hall after lunch. Cheryl jerks it away without thinking, before she can register that it’s small and dainty rather than thick and gloved, and Veronica’s brow creases, concern radiating off her. “Are you alright? Maybe you should go to the nurse.”

Cheryl wipes at her eyes, self-conscious. “I’m fine.”

Veronica purses her lips. “You don’t look it. Are you gonna be okay for the Pep Rally?”

“Oh, you mean the event of my murder?” Cheryl scoffs. “Yeah, I’m fucking peachy.”

Veronica frowns at her, opening her mouth to say something that’s probably an order to go and get some sleep, or the illogistics of Cheryl’s reality, or something else entirely unhelpful. Cheryl shoulders past her.

“I have to go to English,” she sniffs, and ducks into the classroom. She’s almost late, so the seats are mostly filled. There’s one at the front, and then a couple up the back where the loners and criminals sit. Cheryl flicks her eyes over them, trying to decide if it’s worth sitting near them to avoid Mrs Davidson’s spit, and then does a double-take. Even with her head down, there’s no mistaking Toni’s pink ‘do, and there’s a seat right next to her. Tossing her hair back, she makes her way over and puts her books on the desk.

Toni glances up, eyes widening in surprise.

“Hi,” says Cheryl. She sits down and crosses her legs, ignoring everyone’s stares.

“Uh,” says Toni, like she’s not sure Cheryl’s actually talking to her. “Hello?”

Dilton is looking at her, so Cheryl glares daggers at him and his weaselly face. He shirks back around in his seat to face the front. She doesn’t say anything else for a while, waiting until Mrs Davidson’s finished lecturing on Dickens and has pulled up the adaptation they’re watching in class. Cheryl’s already seen it twice, so it doesn’t matter when she twists in her seat towards Toni.

“Psst,” she hisses, and Toni looks over at her. She holds out her hand expectantly. Toni raises her eyebrows.

“What?” she whispers back. Cheryl rolls her eyes.

“My brooch.”

“What?”

“My brooch,” repeats Cheryl, giving her a ‘duh’ look. “I left it at—“

She breaks off, glances around quickly, and then lowers her voice even more. “I left it at your place.”

“Oh.” A little line appears between Toni’s eyebrows. It’s kind of cute. “I didn’t see it, sorry. I’ll look for it tonight.”

Well, that’s useless. Toni goes back to watching the film — Cheryl looks at her profile for a second, illuminated by the blues and whites of the projector. It catches on her lipgloss, and on the six trillion earrings adorning her ear. Cheryl swallows, and looks away.

At least no one can say drunk-her doesn’t have good taste.

***

She decides to blow off the Pep Rally, which makes Veronica annoyingly pleased that Cheryl’s finally taking care of herself, or something. Cheryl goes home, and, methodically, goes through and locks every door and window in her house. Her mother doesn’t care, but then, when does she ever? Cheryl doubts she even notices. She eats her dinner and then locks herself in her room before it’s even dark out, unwitting to take a single chance. She’ll probably wake up tomorrow and this will all seem stupid, because it’s not like the Black Hood’s going to come _here_.

She sits on her bed and tries to read a book, then eventually scrolls on Instagram to see if anyone is posting updates of the Pep Rally. Her eyes keep sliding uneasily to her window. She’s on the second floor, but it wouldn’t be impossible to hike oneself up to it. If she could nail it shut then she would, but the best she can do is drag her dresser in front of it to block it off. It looms ominously over her as she drifts off to sleep.

She dreams that she’s young again, that she’s back with Jason. She’s ten and it’s July, the air hot and sticky, and it’s back when she could sleep in without a pill, when eight hours was the norm. He used to wake her up with his fingers pinched on her nose until she would startle awake, smacking at his hands while he complained that she was missing summer vacation, and _come on, cheryl, lets go to the river_. There’s a moment, brief as it is, when she thinks that’s what happening, and she jolts awake without fear, because Jason always lets up before she can _truly_ run out of breath. Then she realises the hands are on her throat, and before the panic can properly set it, she dies looking into the Black Hood’s eyes.


	4. friday

Her vision fades out, she’s going dizzy, and then suddenly the world shifts back into focus, and when she wakes up it’s with a hangover, and her alarm blaring, and her head face down on Toni’s cotton sheets.

“Jesus,” says Toni, and Cheryl opens her eyes with a snap, half-convinced she’s still getting choked, but it eases as Toni comes into view, “Turn that ear-splitter off, would you?”

Cheryl sits up, swinging her legs off the bed and half out of the covers. Gingerly, she runs a hand down her neck. It feels kind of tender, but she imagines Toni would be looking more freaked if she had ten huge purple bruises on her, so it must look alright. She closes her eyes, and then reaches out to hit ‘off’ on her phone.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, knocking back two pills. She puts the water on Toni’s bedside table, and looks up at her. “Hi.”

For the first time, Toni smiles at her. It’s amazing what basic decency’ll do. Maybe Cheryl ought to try it more often. “Hi. How’re you feeling?”

“Like I got murdered,” says Cheryl flatly, _honestly_, and Toni laughs. “What?”

“Nothing,” says Toni, and sits on the edge of the bed. Her thigh ends up resting next to Cheryl’s, a hot line of connection that makes her feel queasy. “I didn’t know you were funny.”

Cheryl scowls at her, but Toni just laughs more.

“I’m teasing,” she says. “It’s cute.”

Cheryl looks at the floor. Her skirt’s crumpled by her feet, and her red stilettos are haphazard by the desk, along with her lacy shirt. She sniffles.

_God_. She got — she got murdered _again. _In her own house, with all the doors locked and bolted, like they knew where to go. Like she was a _target_, and it wasn’t just chance because she was at the Pep Rally and isolated by herself. Like they’re after her _deliberately_. She knows she’s a bitch, but _god_, to get murdered for it? By an _adult_? What the hell did she _do_?

“Toni,” she says, and sees Toni look at her in surprise out of the corner of her eye. “Something really fucked up is happening to me.”

She fidgets with her hands, and continues with a wobbly voice. “I think I’m — I know this sounds crazy, but I think I’m in _Groundhog Day_.”

Toni stares at her. “Um,” she says, “Okay. Wanna elaborate on that?”

Cheryl glances over at her, startled. Toni’s looking at her with wide eyes, one eyebrow slightly raised, but she hasn’t run screaming yet. Her hands are resting on her knees, and Cheryl looks at them instead of her face, eyes trailing over her jewellery.

“So I — I’ve done this day three times. I keep waking up here, with this stupid hangover, and then eventually I get murdered by the Black Hood and I wake up again.”

Toni’s got dark blue nail polish on, chipped, and her rings have all kinds of cheap gemstones inlaid in them. Her hands look gentle. Soft. “And I _know,_ I _know_ that that sounds totally bananas, but I swear it’s the truth. And I don’t know what to do.”

“Wow,” says Toni, and Cheryl forces herself to meet her eyes. “I mean. It does sound nuts.”

In the distance, Cheryl hears the front door open and close.

“_Yo, Toni_,” calls out Toni’s little Serpent buddy. “_Please tell me that last night you didn’t end up sleeping with that bitch!_”

He bursts through the door, and Cheryl wonders why the fuck he doesn’t ever knock, especially since this isn’t even his house. He looks at Cheryl and frowns, hand still on the doorknob.

“And, you did.”

“_Dude_,” hisses Toni, jerking her head at Cheryl. “What the fuck? Get out.”

He holds up his hands and turns back the way he came, and Toni winces apologetically at her. “Sorry. Sweet Pea’s a tool and _he sucks!_”

She raises her voice on the last couple of words, shouting them out down the hall. Cheryl shakes her head, screwing her eyes up at the noise. “It’s fine.”

There’s silence for a couple of seconds, and then Cheryl gets up, tugging her skirt on and slipping into her shoes. “Really, I should go. Forget I said anything.”

“Cheryl —“

“No, it’s fine,” says Cheryl, and grabs her phone and keys. Toni follows her out into the hall.

“Hey,” she calls, “Cheryl, you can’t just—“

She ignores Sweet Pea in the kitchen, since he’s chugging orange juice from the bottle like a _delinquent_, and slams the front door behind her, teetering on the step up to the trailer.

“Nice going, dickwad,” she hears Toni say, and a sound like she’s punched her friend in the shoulder. Cheryl almost laughs, except nothing feels like it’s very funny.

She walks to the main road as usual, grimaces at the cat-call and the car alarm. She stops at the same corner she has so far, sitting down on the curb because it’s not like getting her skirt dirty _matters_, it’ll fix itself like magic tomorrow anyway. She phones Veronica and gets her and Betty to come and pick her up, running through the conversations as best as she can — _baby girl_, breakfast mimosas, _be grateful someone actually came to pick you up and you don’t have to go to school like that_. She is actually pretty grateful, especially since she doesn’t want to arrive at school in Toni’s _shirt_. That’s almost worse than appearing in last night’s clothes. Cheryl doesn’t even put her usual effort into bugging Betty, too busy formulating a plan in her head — she’s going to go to school, but then she’s getting the hell out of Dodge. Just let the Black Hood _try_ and murder her while she’s speeding away in her car. Good freakin’ luck.

“Cheryl!”

Toni catches her by arm before Cheryl even makes it inside the school building, tugging her to a stop in the parking lot. She lets go immediately, like she’s expecting Cheryl to shout at her for putting her gross, Serpent hands on her. Which, admittedly, would be pretty on-brand for her, but still.

“Toni,” says Cheryl, blinking. Toni’s dressed properly, her makeup done, and Cheryl’s gut twists just looking at her. She suddenly wishes she could remember what it was like to kiss her. “Um. What?”

“You ran outta there this morning,” says Toni. She’s panting a little bit, like she’d hurried to make sure she caught her. “You really wanna drop the bombshell that you’re repeating the same day and then not follow it up with a story?”

Cheryl looks at her some, trying to parse her out. “Gotta live up to the name,” she says.

“Huh?”

“Cheryl Bombshell— _wow_. You really don’t know who I am, do you?”

“I mean,” says Toni, flatly. “You’re not royalty.”

“_Au contraire_,” says Cheryl, and glances at the school doors, worrying on her bottom lip. She _died_ there. _Twice_. Crossing the threshold just seems like it’s _asking_ for trouble.

“Wanna skiv off?” asks Toni. “You can tell me all about what it’s like to be Bill Murray. And we could, like, get breakfast, or something. I’m starving, Sweet Pea ate all my food.”

“Not hungry,” says Cheryl, right as her stomach grumbles loudly. She feels her cheeks go pink, and looks back at the school again. “Or, fine, whatever. So long as we go somewhere on the Northside, I’ve had enough of your trashy little part of town.”

“Wow, nice.” Toni holds her hand out like she wants Cheryl to take it, then flushes and tucks it quickly back into the pocket of her leather jacket. “So Pop’s, then.”

***

“Let’s just say I believe you,” says Toni, frowning, after Cheryl’s explained it as best she can. She takes a long slurp of her milkshake (Cheryl really, _truly_ doesn’t know how she can chug back that much dairy so early in the morning, and heaps another teaspoon of sugar into her coffee). “There must be a reason it’s today, right? What makes today special?”

Cheryl takes a bite of her apple. “Oh, you mean, something aside from my _murder_? Golly gee, I just don’t know.”

Toni snickers. Cheryl feels weirdly proud.

“Okay, I meant, like, anything that might make the Black Hood wanna target you. You piss anyone off recently?”

“Only every day of my _life_,” whines Cheryl, and then gives up on the apple. It tastes like dust anyway. She sets it down on a napkin and steals a piece of Toni’s raisin toast, then rolls her eyes at the look on her face. “What? I know everyone hates me. It’s very carefully cultivated.”

She says it like a joke, but it’s true. She’s spent a long time perfecting that ice-cold, queen bitch persona. Much easier to make people think they can’t bother you if they’re convinced you’re a loveless monster.

Toni looks at her. “I don’t hate you,” she says.

Cheryl scoffs. “Well, you’d be the first.”

Toni looks like she wants to say something to that, but she doesn’t. Instead she puts down her food and shakes her head.

“Maybe that’s what this is about,” she says thoughtfully. “Maybe you have to figure out who he is.”

“The Black Hood?”

“Yeah.” Toni raises her eyebrows meaningfully. “I mean, you’re getting like, unlimited chances to be close to him, right? Maybe you gotta take him down.”

Something curls in Cheryl’s lower abdomen, and suddenly she’s not hungry anymore. “No” she snaps, “I’m not Betty, I’m not fucking Nancy Drew, alright? That’s ridiculous.”

Toni shrugs. “Just saying.”

“Well, don’t,” says Cheryl. She swallows, and looks at her hands. “It’s not like it’s _fun_, okay? It _hurts_.”

Embarrassingly, she feels her throat prickle. Toni probably thinks she’s a total whack-job, first acting like she’s reliving the same day over and over and now having a very public cry-fest. Toni reaches out and grabs her hand.

“Shit, Cheryl, don’t cry. I’m sorry.” When Cheryl looks up, Toni’s eyes are huge, wide open and vulnerable. They look like, if Cheryl tried hard enough, she could learn to read every single emotion Toni’s ever experienced in them. Like her heart would be an open book, rather than the locked diary under the mattress that is Cheryl’s. Toni swallows.

“I— look, here.” She reaches into her pocket with her other hand, pulling out Cheryl’s brooch and setting it on the table. “I meant to give this to you earlier, I don’t know. It’ll be alright, okay? We’ll figure this out.”

“You don’t even believe me,” sniffs Cheryl, and Toni winces.

“Well, it — I mean, I do, kind of, it’s just… fantastical. But I’m here, though.”

Cheryl blinks, hard, and nods. Toni withdraws her hand, pressing her lips together. Cheryl takes a sip of her coffee, mostly so she can avoid Toni’s eyes, but also because the warmth from the cup makes the loss of Toni’s touch just a little less noticeable. God, she’s _pathetic_.

“Alright,” says Cheryl, when she thinks she can speak without her voice breaking. She sets the cup down and folds her hands atop one another, a plan forming in her head. “Tell me something.”

“Huh?”

“Imagine that it’s all real, and then think of what you would have me tell you to prove that it is. I’ll remember it and use it tomorrow.”

Toni narrows her eyes at her. “This feels like a way for you to get dirt on me.”

“Just trust me. Or pick the least gossip worthy thing you can think of, I don’t care. But preferably something nobody else knows.”

Toni studies her for a second, scrutinising her face. She leans forward in her seat, elbows resting either side of her breakfast. “Okay,” she says, slowly. “I think your spider brooch is super ugly. It looks like it should belong to a Disney villain.”

“I meant tell me something _true_.”

“It _is_ true.”

“You don’t have any taste,” dismisses Cheryl, but she’s smiling. “That is a very valuable antique brooch.”

“It’s a very valuable antique brooch that was once owned by Cruella De Vil.”

“She skinned dogs, not spiders.”

“How would you skin a _spider_?”

Cheryl rolls her eyes, “_Not_ the point. And, might I say, a bit rich coming from somebody with a snake emblazoned across her back.”

“Why, because the Serpents are evil?”

Cheryl blinks, taken aback at the bite that’s crept into Toni’s tone. “What? No, I— I wasn’t…”

She looks down at the table. “I thought we were just talking.”

“We were,” grimaces Toni, and sighs. “Sorry. I get— I get defensive about the Serpents, and the Southside. Especially when I’m talking to people like you.”

She shrugs, a little helpless, and gives Cheryl a wry smile. “Guess I tend to read everything as an insult.”

‘People like me?” asks Cheryl, and Toni rolls her eyes.

“Rich people. _Northsiders_.”

Cheryl wants to say something to that, but what can she? She feels the same about the Southsiders, and their trashy trailer parks and graffiti-ridden buildings with the paint peeling off. Three days ago she’d been _appalled_ at the idea of sleeping with Toni. Talking to her, sure, has made it easier to see her as a person, as _Toni, _rather than just seeing the symbol on her jacket, but still… old habits die hard. Cheryl swallows.

“Well,” she says briskly, and gestures for the waitress. “One good thing about us: we don’t mind picking up the bill.”

***

“So,” says Toni as they drive back to school, trailing her finger over the leather interior with a weird sort of intensity. Things have been kind of strange ever since they left Pop’s — not that they’d been _not_ strange beforehand, since the whole situation was strange, but _more_ strange. Toni had tried to pay for her own food and Cheryl had had to fight her on it hard, arguing that a) they were only their because of Cheryl, and b) it wouldn’t even matter once Cheryl got murdered that afternoon. They’d gotten an odd look for that one. “What are you gonna do today?”

Even though she knows very well what she’s talking about, Cheryl asks for clarification anyway, just to buy herself some time.

“I _mean_, what are you gonna do about the whole ‘dying’ situation.”

Cheryl sniffs, and flexes her hands on the wheel. “I’m getting the _fuck_ away from Riverdale.”

“Really?”

She nods, and checks her rear view mirror. She can’t escape the feeling she’s being followed. “Really. Maybe then I’ll actually escape this godforsaken day.”

She turns down a side road even though, technically, she could get to school much quicker taking the main road. If Toni notices, however, she doesn’t say anything, which is good. They don’t exactly need to _shout_ about how Cheryl’s trying to extend her time in her company, it’s much better to silently ignore it.

“You’re not gonna, I don’t know, try and figure out who he is?”

Cheryl scowls, her knuckles going white. “I thought we already agreed I _wasn’t_ Nancy Drew.”

“I guess,” says Toni. “But what if he kills somebody else?”

“He won’t.”

“He won’t?”

She shakes her head. “I’m his target. He came to my _house_.”

“You sound pretty sure for someone who’s only gone through this loop three times. What if it doesn’t work like that?”

“And what way _would_ it work, Toni?” snaps Cheryl. “Do you know? It’s not like I woke up with some guidebook in my head.”

Toni shifts in her seat. “I’m just pointing it out that maybe we should warn somebody.”

Suddenly Cheryl wishes she’d just taken the damn main road. “Well, _I’m_ just pointing out that it’s me, _not_ you, who this is all about. You’re not even involved!”

“You’re the one who told me,” mutters Toni, pulling a face. Cheryl sees it in the reflection of the windscreen.

“Yes, well, I certainly won’t be doing _that_ again, will I? _God_.”

They drives the rest of the way in terse silence, and Cheryl doesn’t get out of the car when they get back to school, staying put with the engine still in gear. When she checks her phone, it says Toni should be just in time for their English lesson.

“You’re not coming in?”

“No,” says Cheryl snippily. “No, I thought I’d get a head start on _escaping my murder._”

Toni lets out a grumble, forcefully unbuckling her seatbelt. “_Fine_. I’ve only been trying to help, but you know what, Cheryl? This is crazy. This is absolutely fucking crazy and I’m starting to think maybe you _are_ Bill Murray, because you could certainly use the wake up call.”

She gets out of the car, movements erratic, and Cheryl feels an overwhelming sense of — god, _something_ — well up in her, choking up her throat. Toni hesitates with her hand on the door, lips pursed.

“Drive safe,” she finally bites out, and slams it shut.

***

Toni’s crazy. That’s what Cheryl decides, after she’s pulling out of the parking lot and pretending she doesn’t see Toni look back over her shoulder, like, six times. So what if she’s nice and she brings her one night stand’s painkillers in the morning. So _what_ if she chased Cheryl down so she could hear the rest of her story. So _what_? Cheryl doesn’t _need_ her, just like she doesn’t need Veronica or stupid Betty or anybody but herself. She’s been doing just fine so far. She thinks about Toni sitting opposite her in the Pop’s booth, the early morning light pulsing around her, and slams her hand on the steering wheel. The road out of RIverdale stretches on in the distance, and far away the stupid welcome sign looms: _The town with Pep! _it proclaims, _Come again soon!_ Well, maybe she will. So long as she survives this fucking day.

Cheryl reaches out and twists the dial for the radio, looking for something to take her mind off everything. It crackles into life, landing one of those channels that only plays old school hits.

_Hey everybody did the news get around_

_about a guy named Butcher Pete? _

_Oh Pete just flew into this town_

_and he’s chopping up all the women’s meat!_

Cheryl glares at the stereo where Roy Brown’s voice is warbling through, watching the needle jump about. “Typical,” she says, with enough venom that it might as well’ve been a curse, and slides it to another station.

_He’s hackin’ and whackin’ and smackin’_

_He’s hackin’ and whackin’ and smackin’_

_He’s hackin’ and whackin’ and smackin’_

_He just hacks, whacks, chopping that meat!_

Cheryl presses her tongue against the back of her teeth, glancing at the road. It’s definitely on another channel. Maybe the wires just got crossed. She fiddles with it some more, but it’s just the same, the _same_, the same. Cheryl lets out a little screech, pressing the heel of her hand into her forehead, _hackin’ and whackin’ and smackin’ _reverberating between her ears.

Ahead of her a car comes into view. It swerves a little, wobbling on the white line. Probably a learner, terrified to be going 60 miles an hour for the first time. Or a drunk. She wouldn’t exactly put it past any Riverdale inhabitant to be knocking back the hard stuff this early in the day.

The car swerves again, careening into her lane, only this time it doesn’t look like it’ll move back in time. Cheryl gasps, and, acting on instinct, twists the steering wheel harshly to the side. Her tyres slip off the road and hit gravel, and suddenly she’s lost control of the entire car and it goes spinning. She slams on the breaks, but there’s nothing for her tyres to grab onto and she just keeps moving, finally crashing into the welcome sign of all places.

Her chest pushes violently against the seat belt, as her body tries to escape the car, her neck jerking forwards and then back with frightening speed. Her vision blacks out for a second.

“Ow,” says Cheryl.

Eventually she pulls her gaze up, eyelids flickering. There are no air bags in her car since it’s from before they were regulation, so her view out the windscreen is clear if cracked. The hood of the car is all crumpled up, smoking, and the roof cuts out most of the sign, so Cheryl’s stuck looking at only one word.

_again, _it says, in it’s cheery yellow font. Cheryl sighs.

“Yeah,” she mutters, and unbuckles her seat belt. She pushes open her door, twisting and planting her feet on the ground. Her legs are shaky as she stands, and it looks like the car coming at her had obviously managed to stay on the road but not bothered to stop and see if she was all right. _Typical_.

She cracks her neck, and turns to survey the car. Smoke billows up from under the hood, it’s front end is crushed around the sign, a back wheel is still spinning where it’s propped off the ground. Somehow, though, it’s still running — the radio plays on, as cheery as if it were in Pop’s restaurant rather than a crashed car. Cheryl rolls her eyes, and hitches herself out of the slight ditch onto the road.

An old sedan is coming this way, approaching slowly, and she waves her hand at it.

_Well Butcher Pete’s got a long sharp knife_, calls the radio in the background.

_He starts choppin’ and don’t know when to stop!_

Cheryl squints at the sedan through splayed fingers as it indicates and pulls over. It looks vaguely familiar.

_All you fellows better watch your wives_

_‘Cause Pete don’t care who’s meat he chops!_

“Hi,” she says at it draws up to her, and leans down to peer through the window. “You’ve gotta help me, I crashed my car—"

The shift from bright sunlight to the darkness of the car interior takes her eyes a second to adjust to. It’s harder because at first, the shapes don’t line up to make anything she’s expecting. In fact, her mind is only half catching up to the fact that she is, literally, looking down the barrel of a gun when she opens her eyes into Toni’s bedroom, gunshot reverberating in her ears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i had to add in a fun little song just to really round out the groundhog day-ness of it all...... i have a weak constitution <3


	5. friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so i meant to throw like 5 re-dos into this chapter but then they got, like, ridiculously long. and i wasnt sure if it would be better to split them up in really short chapters or have overly long ones, but i decided on the latter eventually. idk !!!

_Alright_, thinks Cheryl a few seconds after she wakes (wakes up, comes back to life, whatever). _So he’s stalking her. She can work with that._

She lies there for several moments, just thinking. Trying to get out of Riverdale obviously isn’t an option — it wasn’t coincidence that the Black Hood just _happened_ to show at the sight of her crash. He must have been following her, waiting for his moment. But that makes no sense, because she’s sure she would have noticed him trailing after her on one of the other days. Unless… unless he’d seen her outside of school with Toni, and decided that was a better option than the Pep Rally? But that seems implausible. Cheryl frowns, and presses her face a little harder into the pillow. Christ, maybe she _is_ going to have to Nancy Drew this bitch.

Her phone alarm goes off right on cue, and Cheryl sticks her hand out of the duvet to smack around the bedside table for it. If she ever makes it out of this day, she’s changing that tone immediately — she never wants to hear the freakin’ marimba tune, _especially_ at full volume, ever again in her whole freakin’ life.

“Jesus, turn that ear-splitter off, would you?” asks Toni, trailing in from her hallway. Cheryl hits _silent_ and sits up, rubbing instinctively at the middle of her forehead, just to check there isn’t a hole in it, but her skin is perfectly supple as always.

“Hi, Toni,” she says. Both of Toni’s eyebrows hitch up.

“Uh, hi.” Toni hands her the pills, and Cheryl takes them gratefully, her head aching worse than the other times. “Thought you could use these.”

She looks at her for a few seconds, hovering hesitantly in front of the bed, and frowns down at her hands. “I wasn’t sure you remembered my name. You were drinking a lot last night.”

Cheryl swallows a few gulps of water, and shakes her head. “I remember you.”

“Oh.” Toni looks sort of pleased, and Cheryl smiles a bit. Toni’s fingers glide over hers as she takes the glass back, setting it on the bedside table. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like I got shot in the head," answers Cheryl, and Toni laughs.

“Didn’t know you were funny,” she says, and Cheryl manages to throw a half-grin in her direction. She gets up and stretches her arms above her head, tilting her neck to one side and then the other. _Ouch_. Then she lets out a deep breath, and reaches down to pull her skirt back over her bare legs. Toni watches all of this, expression not exactly _pleased_, but not mad either.

“Heading out?”

Cheryl slips into her shoes. “Things to do, Tee Tee. But I think your Serpent buddy should be along in a minute.”

As if she’d orchestrated it, at that moment Sweet Pea’s voice comes barrelling through the trailer, accompanied by the slamming of the front door. “_Yo, Toni! Please tell me last night you didn’t sleep with that bitch!”_

He rockets through the door. Cheryl looks at him properly for the first time — six feet, dark hair, even darker circles under his eyes. A sort of perpetual growl on his face that makes her think of a Rottweiler. “And, you did.”

Cheryl raises her eyebrows tellingly at a gaping Toni, and does a little curtsey. “See you at school!”

***

In Betty’s car, Cheryl shifts into the middle seat and pokes her head between Veronica and Betty, cheshire cat smile wide on her face. Her elbows rest on the backs of their seats, and she laces her fingers together under her chin.

“So, chums,” she says gaily. Veronica twists her head lazily to look at her, eyes dark and smile soft. Betty keeps herself focused stiffly on the road. “Veronica, did you ever watch _Groundhog Day?_”

Ronnie pulls a face. “Yeah, duh. Best movie. Why?”

“_Well_,” says Cheryl, enticingly. “I was talking to Toni, and it got me thinking about what you would do if, _hypothetically_, you got trapped in loop that also coincidentally was the day of your murder. Like, how would you even _begin_ solving that?”

Veronica looks at her for a long time, little creases appearing above her nose like Meg Ryan. A delighted grin pulls her lips upwards, and eventually she says: “Who’s _Tony_?”

Cheryl rolls her eyes. “Nobody you know. Focus on the thought experiment.”

“I think it’s a little early in the morning for that,” says Betty, smiling a little as she glances at Veronica.

Cheryl purses her lips. “Well, maybe _some_one shouldn’t’ve had so much to drink.”

“It was my _birthday_,” Veronica whines, and sinks a little in her seat. “’Sides, you had, like, _as much_ as me.”

“As if,” huffs Cheryl, even though she must have in order to have blacked out, which she’s never done before. She’d probably be more freaked out about it if she hadn’t then woken up into a _living hell_. “I was perfectly within my capacity.”

Betty snorts. “Oh, _sure_.”

“Well what about _you_, perfect Betty? I suppose you were all home and tucked in at ten?” Cheryl gives her a waspish grin, and pokes her shoulder with a sharp nail. “That’s funny, because I seem to recall _somebody_ getting on the _strip pole_.”

Veronica gasps. “Um, _what_?”

Betty shakes her head, but she’s laughing. “Okay, that did _not_ happen. The only place with a strip pole is _Innuendo_, and I was _well_ sober by the time we got there.”

Veronica giggles again. “That’s true, you were.” She reaches across and pinches Betty’s cheek. “My knight in shining armour.”

Her hand falls to land on Betty’s thigh, and Cheryl watches with bitterness as Betty takes a hand off the wheel to link their fingers together. Perfect Betty. Perfect Betty with her perfect, beautiful girlfriend and their perfect, lovey-dovey fantasy world.

“Eurgh, you two disgust me,” she says, and sees Betty roll her eyes. She smacks both of their shoulders lightly. “Anyway, back to _moi_ and my hypothetical problem. Solving your own murder: discuss.”

Veronica wrinkles her nose. “Why can’t you just see who it is when they kill you?”

“They’re wearing a mask. And gloves. And also sometimes it happens differently, which it makes it hard to plan any tactics.”

“Okay,” says Betty slowly, drawing the word out, and turns down onto a residential street. “Sounds like a tough one.”

“Nobody asked for your opinion, Betty,” snarks Cheryl, even though this has, mostly, been a ruse to get Betty’s advice without asking for it. Veronica sends her a look.

“Whatever,” says Betty, but she’s got a little frown on like she’s thinking about. “I guess I’d start with a suspect list, you know? Talk to witnesses.”

She pauses. “Although I guess that wouldn’t work, because you’d have to still be alive to ask the questions… maybe you should ask Jughead, he likes solving puzzles.”

She trails off and Cheryl leans back in her seat, thinking hard. She can’t talk to witnesses, not in the way Betty’s thinking, but this isn’t exactly the Black Hood’s first rodeo. And his other two escapades have had a _multitude_ of witnesses she could ask questions of. Maybe Toni’s whole solve the murder idea wasn’t actually half bad. At least it’ll give her something to _do_.

***

At home that morning she makes two lists — one, of people who might know something about the Black Hood. Two, people who might, specifically, be out for _her_. She puts Betty at the top of the second one just to make herself smile.

It’s harder than she expected to cram everything she wants to find out — everything she wants to _know_ — into a day. On day five (_today_, if such words still apply), she only manages to talk to the first person on her list. In the end it takes her the better part of four days to get information from Moose, then Archie, and then to test if her mother’s somehow behind it, all the while she’s busy getting killed different ways every night regardless of how she tries to avoid it. It’s fucking annoying.

_Today_, day five, she spies her first victim (bad choice of words, she knows) in the hall after fourth period, and hurries to catch up. Toni’s already given her her brooch in their English class, since Cheryl deigned to sit next to her up the back again. It makes her feel, weirdly, better — okay, so she’s getting murdered on the reg. At least she still looks good. Her heels _click clack_ on the floors decisively, matching the pace of her heart, and she raises her voice to be heard above the other students.

“Moose,” calls Cheryl. She reaches out and wraps her hand around his bicep, pulling him to a stop. She beams at him, showing off probably a few too many teeth than she needs to. “Can I have a word, _mon cher?_”

“Uh…” Moose looks around. “I guess?”

Cheryl grins harder, and tugs on his arm, nails clenching in the fabric of his varsity jacket. “Perfect!”

She pulls him into an empty classroom, and, letting go, clasps her hands earnestly in front of her breast. One of Moose’s eyebrows hitches up.

“Moose,” she says, seriously. “I have to ask you about when you were down at the lake with Midge. When you got…”

She trails off at the blank look that slips over his face. He reaches up with one hand, absently, to paw at his chest, like he’s searching for remnants of the trauma. In her heart she feels suddenly, uncharacteristically sympathetic towards him. The phantom aches are no fun.

“Well, you know what happened,” she finished awkwardly. “I just need to know if you saw anything that might help with identifying the rascal.”

Moose blinks a few times, and shakes his head. “No, I — it was dark, I didn’t see anything.”

“You’re sure?” presses Cheryl.

“Yeah.” More decisive, this time. “I mean— no.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Moose?”

He shuffles on his feet. “I didn’t _see_ anything,” he says. “But I — I thought—“

Cheryl gives him an encouraging nod, and he shrugs, an uncomfortably heavy movement. “I guess I thought it was my dad.”

She blinks.

“Not—“ Moose rubs his forehead. “I mean, it _wasn’t_. But when he came up to us in the car, with the flashlight… I guess it just felt like something a dad would do. You know, kids making out, and stuff. Or it coulda been the sheriff, I don’t know.”

“Oh,” says Cheryl, and purses her lips. Decidedly _not_ helpful. “Well. Thank you, Moose.”

“No worries,” he says, and slips back out of the classroom.

Cheryl goes to the rest of her classes, and then stays behind at school to prepare for the Pep Rally. Well, she makes the other girls prepare, _she’ll_ probably remember this routine until the day she dies (_ha,_ if only it were that easy). Out of interest, she goes to the locker room bathroom during the half-time set just to see if the Black Hood’s still been following her, keeping an eye on the time. At 6:37, the door clangs and Cheryl dies via a knife to the stomach, apparently the Black Hood’s weapon of choice now. Blood flows hot and sticky over her hands, a horrid dark, grisly red like the colour of Veronica’s signature lipstick, and as she lies back on the bathroom floor, the crappy lights flickering above her, she thinks to herself that she better start dying in some classier places.

***

_The in-betweens are fuzzy, strangely liminal spaces where up and down and past and future become relative concepts, nothing and everything. As she teeters on the edge of consciousness, slipping from dead back to alive, she looks up to see a child-like Jason grinning toothily at her, pomegranate juice spilling down over his chin. He holds out the fruit to her with his little hands, but when she looks back up to his face he’s older again, the same age as when he died, frozen forever in the picture of youth, and it’s blood that’s pushing its way through his teeth and dripping down onto her. She looks at the pomegranate and realises its a heart._

*******

On Day 6, Cheryl resolves to talk to Archie at the Pep Rally. So far she’s figured that staying at school is the best way to make sure she lasts through the day, possibly due to the number of people she’s surrounded by. It’s a boring day to repeat, but on Day 6 she skips classes and goes to investigate the Blue and Gold’s room instead, pouring over Jughead’s notes about the Black Hood with interest. Turns out he doesn’t know a lot. Certainly not anything she couldn’t have told him. With that in mind, she guesses that if she _has_ to talk to Bert or Ernie, Ernie is probably the better choice. Plus, he keeps seeking her out anyway.

“Hey, Cheryl,” says Archie as he bounds over to the water cooler, wiping his forehead with the back of his head. He’s out on the field warming up for the game, but she assumed he’d come over if she stood here long enough. “Big night, or something?”

She gives him a forced grin. “The biggest. But Archie, since you’re here, if I could pick your brains for a minute? I‘ve been wanting to ask you something that’s just a _trifle_ unpleasant, so I really do apologise in advance.”

Archie frowns at her, immediately going concerned — his shoulders drop, and he steps a little closer to her. Contrary to appearances, Cheryl does, actually, feel pretty bad that she’s about to dredge it up for him. Archie’s not awful.

“What’s up?”

“It’s about the Black Hood.”

Archie’s eyes widen, just a little bit around the edges. “What?”

Cheryl rocks back and forward on her heels, wanting to get this over with as quickly and painlessly as possible. She’s only got a couple of hours left of this day, and she wants to try stocking the locker room with a few weapons to help her evade death. “The Black Hood, and, look, I’ll cut to the chase. Do you remember anything about that morning? Anything about _him_? An identifier?”

“Why?” asks Archie, brow furrowing. He pushes his hand through his sweaty hair, breathing heavily. “Cheryl, if you’ve seen something—“

“I haven’t,” she says, quickly, but Archie squints at her. Inwardly she curses how freaking perceptive the guy is — it must be a side-effect of all the earnestness that drips off him.

“You have,” he says slowly. He looks over his shoulder, then back to her. “Cheryl, you have. I can see it in your face. You’re scared.”

She tries to laugh. It sounds more like a squeak.

“Nonsense, Archiekins,” she says, and then falters. Maybe, if she tells him, she could get Archie to come with her to the bathroom, hide in one of the stalls, help her fight him off. She gives him an appraising look; he’s pretty strong, he could probably take him, and it’s not like — well, he _might_ get hurt if they fail, but it would reset when Cheryl died. It’s basically no-risk. She narrows her eyes at him. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me,” Archie says, so Cheryl does. She drags him under the bleachers and away from practice, sits down on the dirt and tells him _everything_, and unlike Toni or Veronica he believes her. Just like that.

“You’re insane, Archie Andrews,” she says, hands wrapped around her knees. “What makes you think I shouldn’t be carted off to the nut house right now?”

Archie reaches out and puts his hand on her shoulder. He’s squatting in front of her, face pale, and the setting sunlight’s turning his hair orange. He looks like Jason. “I don’t think you’re lying,” he says simply. He tries to laugh. “And, it’s Riverdale, so.”

Cheryl huffs a breath. “Yeah. Riverdale.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

Her and Archie make a plan. He is, surprisingly, not inclined to argue that they should do something responsible like tell the Sheriff. Something’s hardened in his eyes, and she supposes he wants his revenge. She can understand that — if he hadn’t done it himself, she likes to think she would have killed her dad for what he did to Jason. So they make a half baked plan that, naively, they think will work.

At half-time, Cheryl waits five minutes before heading off to the locker rooms. She walks calmly, and with purpose. She gets inside and sits down on one of the benches — no way is she cornering herself in the toilets. She waits, her pulse beating hard against her skin, eyes on her phone. The minutes tick by, and then, at 6:37: the door clangs.

Cheryl draws a short breath. She can’t let him enter the toilets, can’t let him have the possibility of finding Archie, perched on a seat in one of the stalls, before her. The lockers are obscuring her from view, but she can change that.

_This was a stupid fucking idea_, thinks Cheryl, and calls out.

“_Don’t_ say ‘I told you so’, Veronica. I feel fine.”

Footsteps. Cheryl swallows the bile rising in her throat — she hasn’t actually _baited_ herself like this before. She sticks her head in her locker, trying to look like an easy target while still being aware of where he is. “Veronica?”

She catches a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye, and shrieks in genuine fright. “What the _fuck?_”

The Black Hood looks at her for a few seconds, knife glinting at his thigh. Cheryl gulps, and takes a few steps backwards. It puts her cornered against the wall, but it should allow Archie to come and get him from behind. The Black Hood lunges for her, and Cheryl tries to side-step, grabbing his free arm and pushing him away. It just brings the other side of his body closer to her, though, knife angled dangerously towards her.

Cheryl squeaks, and grabs at the wrist with the knife, trying to force his hand away. Archie still hasn’t come out of the stupid bathroom like he should, and the element of surprise doesn’t seem to worth it now.

“Archie!” cries Cheryl, as the knife makes contact with her abdomen, right under her ribs. The Black Hood holds it there for a second, digging painfully into her skin. A small amount of blood starts to pool in her cheer uniform.

“It will hurt more if I push it in slowly,” he says, voice low and gravelly as if he’s trying to disguise his voice. Cheryl grits her teeth, suddenly really fucking _mad._

“That your Batman impression?” she spits, still trying to stop him from pressing the knife deeper. “Needs some work, what kind of _low-budget_ theatre group were _you_ in—“

Archie’s not coming, Cheryl realises. And it _will_ hurt more if the knife goes in slowly, the pain throbbing in her stomach is fucking proof of that. So she looks into the Black Hood’s eyes — grey-green, lined around the corners, hard — and bites on her tongue. _Fuck_. She stops pushing back against his arms, and before the Black Hood can adjust to that, the knife tears through her body. She doesn't feel it at first (it always takes a few seconds for her brain to catch up, weirdly), but she winces anyway since she knows what's coming.

“Son of a bitch,” she mutters, as the pain starts to circulate. The Black Hood tugs on the knife, and side-steps her easily as she slides down to the floor. Cheryl closes her eyes. She can’t believe she’s dying in this fucking bathroom _again_. And why won’t he just use that stupid gun more often? It’s way better (and _quicker_) than the knife. Being murdered is the fucking worst.

“Cheryl!” yells Archie at some point, grabbing at her face. He shoves his hands down onto the wound, and Cheryl hisses, because that _hurts._

“You are so fucking unreliable,” mutters Cheryl, straining to open her eyes. “Seriously, where the fuck were you?”

“I was— god, fuck, I’m sorry _I’m sorry I’m so fucking sorry_, I got caught—“ Archie eyes are wide and frantic, face absolutely drained of all colour. “I’m gonna go get help, it'll be okay.”

Cheryl rolls her eyes. Kind of. She tries. “Don’t bother. Jus’ gonna reset in a minute.”

Her vision swims. She guesses it’s kind of nice not to die alone.

“I’m gonna go get someone, okay? You’re gonna be _fine_, I swear,” says Archie again. She feels pretty bad about for him, actually. Kind of guilty. This is the second time he’s had to desperately plug someone's stomach. Maybe she’ll leave him out of the rest of the loops, try not to traumatise him anymore. It's not like he was a great help.

“Archie,” she says, and smiles up at him (it probably doesn't look great, judging by the way his face crumples, and reaches up to pat his cheek with a bloody hand. Her words are coming out a little slurred. “I’m havin' a hell of a week, Archiekins.”

“I’m gonna get help, I’m gonna—"

***

_I’m gonna get help, says Jay Jay, staring down at Cheryl’s arm in horror. I’m gonna get mom, hang on, just — just stop bleeding, you’ll be fine._

_Cheryl sobs, big fat tears falling down her cheeks and dripping onto the horrible cut in her arm. Blood is flowing freely out of it, circling her pale skin and then falling in huge drops to the grass. _

_You made me, she cries. You made me climb the tree! You made me!_

_Jason looks at her. You made me die, he says, horribly. Look at me, Cheryl, there’s a hole in my fucking skull. You made me. You made me. You made me. You— _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope u guys enjoyed this even tho it was very lacking in choni content..... this is v much a cheryl centric fic bc if the show wont give her development then i guess i'll have to do it!


	6. friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a short one today my loves, and unfortunately not a particularly good one for choni :( it was going to be another two parter, but day 8 got, like, wayyyy out of hand and it needs its own space, so here we are! fair warning this is cheryl’s lowest moment....things are not going well for our gal right now

_Fuck_, thinks Cheryl when she wakes up. _So that one was rough_.

She pulls herself up and back into the living world gingerly, a sort of bone-tired exhaustion pushing on the air around her. It’s a slog to switch off the alarm, hard to respond to Toni’s kindness with the pills and water. But she has to. She’s a Blossom — she carries on. Jason’s death didn’t kill her, and this won’t either. Well, not anymore than it already has. But still. It’s hard.

“Sorry, just a second,” says Cheryl, holding up a finger as Toni starts to speak again. She drags herself into a standing position, wincing and clutching at her abdomen, and ignores Toni’s blink of surprise. She pads out of the bedroom in bare feet, and calmly goes to the sink to refill the glass of water Toni brought her, then gulps it down. She sets it on the countertop, walks to the front door, and opens it.

“Yes, it’s the bitch,” she says, smiling thinly.“No, you can’t come in. Go away.”

She slams the door right in Sweet Pea’s astonished face, feeling better than she has since her and Toni went for breakfast three days ago. When she turns, the girl in question is standing there gaping at her, looking vaguely repulsed. Cheryl waves a dismissive hand over her shoulder, closing her eyes briefly.

“Oh, he’ll survive,” she says, “unlike some of us.”

She walks over and grabs Toni’s wrist, leading her to one of the stools by the counter and sitting them both down. Toni’s looking at her like she’s crazy, but seriously, what else is new. Cheryl props her head on her hand, tilting it to 90 degrees.

“What did I do last night?” she asks, a sort of resigned note to her voice that betrays how really freaking _sick_ of this she is. Toni’s eyebrows furrow.

“Yeah,” she says, pulling her wrist out of Cheryl's hold. “I’m asking myself the same question.”

Cheryl sighs. She sits up properly, twisting towards her.

“Toni. This is really, really important. I need to know exactly what happened last night, and whether anyone might want to kill me for it.”

Toni blanches. “Um, _what_?”

It takes a fair bit of cajoling, since Toni is especially weary of her now that she’s kicked her friend from her house, but eventually she starts to tell Cheryl what had happened. It lines up well with her own memories of the night, which are mostly of dancing with Veronica and Josie — things get fuzzy shortly after Veronica had grabbed her face, looked her deep in the eyes and cried _Innuendo_ loud in her ears. She barely remembers the Uber, even less so actually arriving at the bar. Her only concrete memory is the blonde on the strip pole who apparently wasn’t Betty.

“You were just, like, at the bar,” says Toni, shrugging. “I don’t know. It was your friend’s birthday, she’d forgotten you? You said that, uh, you didn’t — you said you didn’t want to go home.”

Toni shoots her a side glance, and Cheryl’s stomach curdles with unease at the way she’s looking at her. “Something about your mom. I don’t remember. So we came here. Kind of regretting that now.”

Toni _does_ remember, Cheryl can see it on her face. God. She can only imagine the kind of shit she said, alone in a gay bar with Veronica off making cow eyes at Betty, or (more likely) being dutifully escorted home and tucked into bed, maybe with her heels dangling from Betty’s finger.

“And _nothing_ strange happened?” presses Cheryl, desperately. “Nobody followed us? You didn’t, like, see some weirdo hanging about outside looking like he’d be handy with a knife?”

“No,” says Toni, looking seriously freaked now. “No, what the fuck?”

Cheryl presses her face into her hands, and screams into them. Toni backs away slightly, stool screeching against the floor.

“So you’re like, legit crazy, huh?”

“Oh fuck _off_, Queen of the Buskers,” snaps Cheryl, and gets up. This is _useless!_ Useless, useless, useless. Moose didn’t know anything, Archie didn’t know anything, nobody fucking knows anything! Toni’s plan fucking sucks. Cheryl stomps over to the fridge, already ready for this day to be over, and sticks her head inside it, frowning at the food on offer. “Do you have anything that isn’t one hundred percent processed sugar?”

“I will _kick_ you out of my house,” says Toni. Cheryl scoffs.

“I’d like to see you try.”

Cheryl bats aside the frozen waffles and yogurt and hot sauces, trying to find something she could actually eat for breakfast. Dying really takes it out of a girl. She opens her mouth to complain again when two arms slide around her waist and hoist her upwards, not exactly gently.

“What the _fuck?_” she says, craning her neck. Toni glares up at her, huffing. “You’re like, five feet high?”

“Yeah, you suck,” Toni says, and walks her over to the door. She lets go of Cheryl with one arm to open it, leaning backwards so that she can rest Cheryl’s weight on her and not have to put her down. Cheryl’s not paying _attention_ to the touch, exactly, but she’s — well, it’s just that — it’s just _something_, okay! Shut up! Toni dumps Cheryl unceremoniously on the front step.

“Real mature,” bites Cheryl, her cheeks red. “Truly adult-like behaviour.”

Toni gives her a very fake looking grin, and says: “You said you wanted to see me try!”

She shuts the door in Cheryl’s face, and Cheryl scowls briefly at the number nine fixed to it. Then she stomps over to the window that looks into the kitchen, positioned above the sink. “I need my phone,” she hollers, pounding on the glass. “And my keys. Didn't your shitty primary school teach you that you can't just _steal_ people’s possessions?”

Toni wanders out of the room. She’s gone for several moments, and then when she reappears it’s to open the sliding window, though she stands well out of reach. Cheryl’s phone and keys are in her hand.

“Veronica’s calling,” says Toni, looking down at Cheryl's phone thoughtfully. “Want me to tell her what a psycho bitch you are?”

“No, I _don’t_,” snaps Cheryl, glaring at her. She reaches into the trailer on her tip-toes, scowling when Toni steps further out of reach.

_“Um, pardon me?”_ says Veronica’s voice through the phone’s speaker, and _oh._ Cheryl really, _really_ hates Toni Topaz.

“Give me that,” she yells, and takes it when Toni hands it back snickering. “You’re such a _snake_.”

She holds the phone up to her ear, cheeks burning. “Hi, Veronica… No, that was just some _bitch_ I went home with last night.”

She directs this last at Toni, giving her the most withering look she can manage. It’s made freshmen cry, but Toni looks unaffected.

_You wound me_, she mouths. Cheryl reaches in through the window, clicking her fingers expectantly, and makes Toni hand her her keys while Veronica laughs in her ear.

“Um, _what?_” Veronica says, “Cheryl — baby girl, did you say you went home with a _woman?_”

Cheryl freezes. God, no. She got so fucking caught up in all of Toni’s antics that she did, didn’t she? She said it. Cheryl’s breath hitches in her throat, and without thinking she rips the phone from her ear and hangs up, staring at the screen without seeing it. Her own reflection looks back at her. It doesn’t look great.

“Uh,” says Toni hesitantly, _warily_. “Cheryl?”

Cheryl darts her gaze up at her. The pounding of her blood is hurting her ears.

“I—“ says Toni, face ashen, “I heard— are you—?”

“_Fuck_ you,” says Cheryl, too loudly. Tears spring up in her eyes, but she doesn’t wipe them away, because that would look weak. “Literally _fuck you_, I didn’t ask for any of this.”

She looks up at the sky. “I didn’t fucking ask for this!”

She starts walking, away from Toni and her stupid trashy trailer and her stupid trashy truths. She redials Veronica’s number.

“Cheryl—“

“I need you to come and pick me up,” she says. “I need you to come and pick me up right the fuck now, alright? No questions.”

Veronica sighs. “Sure. I’m literally leaving right now to come get you.”

***

Betty and Veronica come and pick her up, like always. Unlike always, Cheryl sits in the back of the car in silence, fuming and wanting to cry and also wanting to _die_, which is a statement that is no longer accurate now that she knows what the sensation is like, and now that she knows it won’t even _last_.

Veronica keeps shooting looks, sometimes to Betty and sometimes to her, chewing on her lip. Cheryl rests her elbow on the lip of the window, fingers splayed across her eyes, and rubs gently at the skin there.

“Spit it _out_, Veronica,” she snaps.

“I’m just worried about you,” says Ronnie, twisting in her seat. “Cher, you look awful, you were in the Southside, that girl who answered the phone—“

“It doesn’t matter,” says Cheryl, and closes her eyes. “It doesn’t matter, Ronnie, it’ll all be fucking gone tomorrow.”

And no matter how many questions Ronnie pesters her with (or Betty, she gets a few in), Cheryl keeps her mouth shut. She just stares out the window and ignores them, and when they drop her home she gets out the car without a word. She walks back into her house. Her mom is in the drawing room, like usual. For one instant, blinding moment, Cheryl hates the stupid _drawing room_ more than anything else on earth. What pretentious fucking bullshit.

“Cheryl,” greets her mom coldly, the same as she has every other morning. “I hope you haven’t spent the night tarnishing our family name.”

_Of course not_, Cheryl had snapped on day one. _No, Mother_, on days two and four. The others she thinks she’d just ignored her.

“I fucking hate you,” she says, this time. “You’re probably the one behind all this shit, sitting in this stupid room with your mangled face and all your… your pent up hatred and evilness rotting you from the inside. God, Mother, you’re _rotting_. You look like _you’re_ the one in this stupid loop.”

“How _dare you,”_ starts her mother, but Cheryl’s already taking the stairs two at a time. She slams the door to her bedroom shut, leans back against it and exhales out several long and harsh breaths. Her head _hurts_, not the usual hangover-hurt, but an awful, sleep-deprived ache. The lights are on but nobody’s home, indeed. She walks over to her bed and lies down. It’s so _nice_. The mattress isn’t too hard, the sheets are silky soft, and they smell like _home_. Cheryl sniffs, tugging the duvet over her shoulder and burying her face in her pillow. God. She’s had enough.

Without meaning to she drifts off to sleep. Sure, technically she just woke up an hour ago, but sleep doesn’t exactly feel like it counts when it’s an immediate jolt from one day to the other. She wakes up groggy and with her hair stuck to her face, her limbs heavy with sleep and only half underneath her covers. It’s five in the evening _—_ she's slept through the entire day. She stumbles into the shower, washes her hair, and then goes back to bed with a block of chocolate and the notebook from day five. It’s empty, of course, but she starts writing anyway.

_Day One — killed at Pep Rally in locker rooms. Toni brooch bathroom. Mean to everyone._

_Day Two — killed at Pep Rally in school bathrooms. Toni flirts with me at practice? Mean to everyone._

_Day Three — totally valid freakout. Killed at home. _

_Day Four — nice to Toni. Pop’s. Black Hood follows me (saw me outside of school?) and shoots me. _

_Day Five — killed at Pep Rally. Moose > useless. Not a complete bitch._

_Day Six — Pep Rally. Tried telling Archie > did not work. _

_Day Seven — fucking awful. Mean to Toni. Yelled at Veronica. Probably about to be murdered by my heinous fucking mother, assuming the Black Hood doesn’t break in again._

Cheryl taps her pen against the paper, and eats a square of chocolate. She feels better, more refreshed, after sleeping the day away. She looks at her list — if she had to choose, day four was the best. Not because of Toni (well, not _totally_), but it just… objectively sucked the least. And while she knows it’s stupid to base her plans of attack off a movie, what _else_ is she going to do? Surely she can give up one day to be nice? If it gets her out of this one, well, even being nice to Betty’ll be worth it.

“Cheryl?”

It’s her mother. Cheryl’s mood sours, but she gets up and goes over to the door anyway. She’s been assuming that the Black Hood will break in and strangle her like he did the last time she avoided the Pep Rally, and she can’t be bothered to try and avoid it. She’d locked all the doors again, and then barricaded her dresser against the bedroom door rather than window, prepared to just hope for the best — it’ll be hilarious, she thinks dryly, if she makes it out of this day. Just really peachy keen.

She puts a hand on the door. “What, mother?”

“You’re missing your cheer game.”

“I know.” Cheryl withdraws her hand. “I don’t feel well.”

“You’ve been in there all day.”

“I was sleeping.”

Her mother doesn’t say anything for a while. Then: “Did you take a pill?”

Cheryl’s stomach twists. She hates that she needs the pills, that she can’t sleep through the night without them. And she knows her mother thinks that they’re just another sign of her fucked up brain. “No. I will tonight.”

More silence. “Maybe take a few, Cheryl. God knows you look like you could use it.”

Despite herself, Cheryl smiles. If she tries hard enough, she’s almost able to pretend she can hear love under the insult. “I will, Mom.”

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Cheryl echoes, and listens to the clack of her heels on the floorboards. Then she goes and downs four sleeping pills. As she teeters on unconsciousness, she reaches out for the shape of Jason in the dark, fingers splayed. His hand’s _right there_, barely inches away, and if she can just touch it, just grab it, she can pull him up, up out of that darkness and back to her, she just has to try a little _harder— _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok also i just want to say thank you to everyone who commented on the last chapter!!!! i tried to respond to them all but omg u guys are so nice i love u all


	7. friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pros of this chapter: toni! a minor plot twist! kevin!!
> 
> cons of this chapter: even tho no one invited or wanted him here, jughead finally makes an appearance. yes hes one of my favs, but i also hate him, and honestly thats valid. he sucks

— Cheryl’s alarm rings, and she blinks heavily, feeling even more lethargic than usual. She rubs her hands over her eyes in a daze, waiting for Toni’s usual contribution. _Jesus, turn that ear-splitter off, would you?_ But it doesn’t come. Dread creeps up the back of Cheryl’s neck.

_No fucking way_, she thinks, and opens her eyes.

It’s weird to be relived. Like, really weird. She wants nothing more than to get out of this Friday, but looking up at Toni’s ceiling all she can manage is this strange sense of _oh, that’s good_. She’s never been happier to see water stained plaster in her life.

“Urgh,” mumbles Cheryl, and twists her head. Where the hell is Toni?

She sits up and swings her legs out of bed, one hand rubbing at her temple. She stands up but doesn’t bother to get her skirt, instead letting Toni’s oversized tee hang down over her underwear. She waits another moment, and then pads gently to the door, peeking out into the hallway.

“What the hell?” mutters Cheryl, confused, and goes out to the kitchen. Toni’s eating cereal at the counter where they had their fight yesterday. She looks up as Cheryl enters.

“Oh, hey,” she says. “How’re you feeling?”

Cheryl blinks at her. Toni makes an expectant face, spoonful of cereal hovering between her mouth and the bowl. She’s eating fruit-loops, because apparently she’s a child.

“Oh, um,” manages Cheryl. “You— Tylenol?”

“In the top cupboard,” says Toni, gesturing to it. “Help yourself.”

Dimly, Cheryl reaches up to the mentioned cupboard and takes out the Tylenol. She unscrews the cap and pours two into her hand, then picks up a glass and fills it from the sink. Looking out the window, she gets a fresh wave of nausea as she remembers yesterday, her and Toni spitting insults at each other through it. She drains the glass and stares at Toni. Toni stares back.

“Did you want some pants, or something?” she asks eventually. Cheryl kind of feels like she’s going to cry.

“I—"

The front door flies open with a bang, so forceful Cheryl’s half-surprised it doesn’t bounce off it’s hinges. “Yo, Toni!” cries Sweet Pea, striding in. He falters slightly at the sight of Cheryl in the kitchen, but only for a moment, recovering quickly.

“Huh,” he says, and shrugs. Toni had twisted around in her seat at the noise, but she turns back with an eye roll when she sees who it is. “I was gonna ask if you slept with that bitch, but obviously, you did.”

“Dude,” says Toni, reproachfully, as Sweet Pea slaps her on the back. Cheryl gapes at them both.

“I,” she says. “Am I dreaming?”

“‘Fraid not,” says Sweet Pea, pushing past her to rifle through the cabinets. He pulls out the cereal and a bowl. “Though I am a thing of dreams.”

“You wish,” snorts Toni. Sweet Pea moves to get to the fridge, then gives Cheryl a look when he realises she’s in his way, his eyebrows going all flat and unimpressed. He is a _lot_ taller than her, especially since she doesn’t have shoes on, and Cheryl’s not really used to having to crane her neck to look at people. It makes her feel small in more ways than one.

“You’re still here,” he says, and Cheryl has to escape back to the bedroom before she loses her entire freaking mind. She pulls on her skirt — it’s definitely the one from Veronica’s party, she’s not totally delusional, and it _is_ still Friday. Then she paces the room a few times, wringing her hands together.

“This is crazy,” she mutters, catching sight of herself in the mirror on Toni’s desk. She looks wild, hair and makeup in disarray. “This can’t be — it can’t be _different, _why would it be different? That makes no sense, unless…”

A horrible feeling settles in her stomach. Toni was acting like she was mad at her. And Cheryl knows, she _knows_ that Toni wasn’t mad at her the first few do-overs. It was only yesterday. Oh god. What if…

“Hi,” says Toni, and Cheryl jumps. Toni’s leaning against the door frame with her hip, arms crossed. “You alright in here? Freakin’ out about going home with a girl?”

_Oh my god_, thinks Cheryl. Toni _knows_.

“Toni?” she asks, feeling like the floor’s about to give out under her. “Do you… _remember?_”

“Last night?” Toni pushes herself off the frame. “Sure. You were the one drinking enough to kill, not me.”

“No, not last night. You don’t…? Are you mad at me?”

Toni shrugs.

“Why?”

That little crease appears above her nose, her eyebrows drawing together. Her lips part. “I don’t… I don’t know.”

“Oh my god,” says Cheryl, feeling faint. There’s consequences. There’s _consequences_. “I have to go see Archie,” she says suddenly, and Toni blinks.

“Alright,” she says. “I mean, no one’s keeping you here.”

“Right.” Cheryl gathers her things (not the brooch, though — she leaves that where it is), then stops in front of Toni. “Um. Toni, I’m really. I’m really sorry about yesterday. I was just super tired. So. Please don’t be mad at me anymore.”

Both of Toni’s eyebrows hike up. “Bit of a shit apology, there.”

Cheryl pauses, shifting on her feet.

“The situation’s… complicated,” she adds eventually, even though it’s obviously not enough. She swallows back her instinct to go on the defensive, and says: “If you — I know I have no right to ask you of anything, but if you could come and find me at school sometime? I promise I’ll explain better.”

Toni runs her tongue over her teeth, scrutinising her. “Okay. Yeah, If I can.”

Cheryl nods. “Thank you.”

She lets herself out of the trailer, makes the walk up to the main street. About halfway there, her phone buzzes. It’s Veronica. _Weird_, thinks Cheryl, but she guesses it’s taken longer than usual for her to call, and Veronica _had_ rang yesterday. She answers.

“Hey, Ronnie.”

“Baby girl!” coos Veronica. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re not dead. How was your night?”

Cheryl shrugs even though Veronica can’t see. “It was… something. Could you come and pick me up? I’m in the Southside.”

Veronica squeaks. “The _Southside?_ Cheryl! What did you _do?_”

“It’s complicated,” says Cheryl, and sits down on the side of the road. Veronica makes a noise she interprets as _I’ll say!_. There’s some talking she can’t quite make out, and then Veronica says, quite clearly:

“Okay. We were about to go by Betty’s super quick, but we can come get you instead. But I want _all_ the details, Cher. Betty’s sacrificing her Bio textbook for this.”

Cheryl rolls her eyes. “Oh, how on earth will she cope?”

Veronica giggles. “Be nice. We’ll see you in a bit, okay? We’re literally leaving right now to come get you.”

***

Veronica pesters her for details the _entire_ car-ride to Cheryl’s house, whinging and whining and offering incentives, trying to guilt her into giving up just a _name_, because that shirt is _definitely not yours, Cheryl, you know purple isn’t your colour_. Cheryl keeps her mouth tightly shut — not because she _wants_ to aggravate Veronica, but because… if she _doe_s end up telling her about Toni… she supposes she wants it to be one of the better do-overs.

She blows them a kiss as they leave, but this time rather than rolling her eyes at her, Veronica sticks her head out the window and makes a ’watching you’ sign. Cheryl smiles in spite of herself.

She gets ready as quickly as possible, forgoing her shower so that she can reach school before classes actually start. After getting there, she has to think for a few moments about where to find Archie — if she really racks her brain she has pretty good idea of who’s where this morning, probably as a side effect of accidental memorisation through repetition (like, should she be a psych major or what?). She eventually stumbles upon Archie in the common area by the vending machine, as he apparently debates between the merits of a _Snickers_ bar or bag of chips.

“Archie,” she cries, smile splitting onto her face, surprisingly relieved to see him standing there. Archie grins back at her despite looking a little confused, and waves.

“Hi —?“

Cheryl throws her arms around him, cutting him off.

“Thank god,” she says into his shoulder. “Archie, I’m so sorry.”

Archie pats her back awkwardly, but not unkindly.

“Um,” he says. “What for?”

Cheryl draws back, keeping her hands on his shoulders. Her nails stick out against his varsity jacket, bright red on blue, like her blood on her cheer uniform. She gulps. “Nothing, I just — I just wanted to say.”

Archie gives her this bemused little smile. “Okay? You know, it’s weird, I did actually have this dream—“

“Hi,” interrupts Jughead, appearing next to them out of nowhere and with absolutely no warning. Cheryl jumps, thinking to herself that she should get him some freaking tic-tacs to carry around. Instead she gives him a withering look.

“I can’t believe I was stupid enough to think I could do this without seeing you,” she says, and lets go of Archie. She looks Jughead up and down. “Well, I certainly don’t have anything to say to you, hobo. You can move along.”

“This is not the hobo you’re looking for,” says Jughead dryly, and Archie laughs. “What’re you kids doing?”

“I’m being nice,” says Cheryl, and then has a thought. “Hey, Jones, wanna tail my mother for me today? I’ll pay you a hundred bucks. Just follow her around and tell me if she meets up with anyone who could conceivably be a serial killer.”

And that’s how Cheryl hires Jughead, amateur sleuth.

***

Toni comes and finds her at lunch time. Just, walks straight up to where Cheryl’s eating with Kevin and Josie, face set with determination, and stands there until Cheryl acknowledges her presence.

“Toni,” she says, awkwardly. Kevin and Josie are staring at her with curiosity, probably at the fact that Cheryl even knows a Southside Serpent’s name. She guesses it could be worse. Cheryl could have decided to sit with the cheerleading girls. “Hi.”

Toni shrugs a little, her Serpent jacket bunching around her shoulders. Cheryl can’t remember if she’s been wearing it the other days — maybe it’s meant as a tiny _fuck you_. “You said to come find you.”

“Right,” says Cheryl. “I did.”

She cuts a glance at her friends. Both of them are giving Cheryl _very_ knowing looks. “Can we go someplace else?”

“Sure.”

Her and Toni walk out to the student carpark in silence, Cheryl leading the way. It’s pretty much empty — theres a group of girls crowded in a car with the heater on (because the school’s heating _sucks_ and it’s creeping up on December right now), but that’s it. She turns to face Toni nervously, but Toni’s smirking at her.

“Wow,” she says, but it sounds good-natured. “You, like, _really_ didn’t want anyone to see us, huh?”

Cheryl shakes her head. “Not really. Not because — I know you probably think it’s because you’re a Serpent, and it might’ve been because of that at first. But it’s not anymore. I’m just _scared_.”

She shrugs as she says it, voice cracking, and pulls her jacket tighter around the middle. “I’m so fed up with just _living _like this, where everything’s… I can’t seem to get out of my own head, you know? And I know I act like a — a psycho bitch, but it’s only because I know how. I don’t know how to do this.”

She gestures between them, and finally looks at Toni rather than the building behind her. “I’m really sorry.”

Toni’s face softens, her mouth pulling to the side. “Oh. I— I’m sorry too, then. I guess I kind of assumed the worst about you."

She shifts her weight back and forth, twisting her rings around her fingers. "What I said this morning, where I made fun of you for having a freak-out...that was _really_ not cool, and I shouldn't've done it. And I could’ve been nicer to you. Bet you had a hell of a headache, right?”

“A bit,” admits Cheryl. Toni reaches out and clasps her arm gently.

“Wanna start over?”

“Sure,” says Cheryl. It’s more true than Toni knows, but she doesn’t mention it. It doesn’t feel right. Toni squeezes her wrist lightly before letting go.

“I’ve got something for you,” she says, and Cheryl holds out her hand instinctively. “Hadn’t decided if I was gonna give it to you or not, but. Here.”

She puts the spider brooch in Cheryl’s hand. Cheryl smiles down at it. “Thank you.”

“No worries.”

She gazes at her for a few more seconds, then holds out her hand. “Wanna go back inside? It’s freezing out here.”

Cheryl slips her hand into hers. She’ll let go once they get back into the school, but for now? It’s really nice.

***

“Sooo,” says Kevin later at the Pep Rally, both eyebrows raised. It’s not quite time for the game to start, but people have started filing in to fill the stands and both the cheerleaders and footballers are mingling with their friends on the field, stocking up on liquids before the game. Kevin had sidled up to her about a minute ago, lips pressed together to keep from grinning. It’s his _I have gossip and need to talk about it_ face, only this time she’s pretty sure she already knows what it’s about. As if he’s read her mind, Kevin says: “Since when do you talk to Toni Topaz?”

Cheryl rolls her eyes, fiddling with her sleeves and tugging them down over her wrists. Her eyes keep scanning the crowd, searching for the Black Hood, or someone who could conceivably be him. Her murder doesn’t stop just because she’s going with a crisis. “What do you care, Gossip Girl?”

“I don’t, I’m just… curious. You know. As an impartial third party.”

Cheryl cuts her gaze from the crowd for a second. “_Why?”_

“_Because_,” says Kevin. “You _hate_ the Southsiders, and now you’re having lunchtime rendezvous’ with them. Behaviour doesn’t just _change._”

“I talk to Jughead,” deflects Cheryl, and Kevin gives her a look that clearly reads: _please_. It’s a fair point.

“You hate Jughead. If anything you just proved me right. And—“

He holds up a finger. “I’m observant. I notice you’ve got a certain bit of jewellery on right now that you did _not_ have this morning.”

Cheryl doesn’t need to look down at the spider brooch pinned to her uniform to know what he’s talking about. It burns against her skin, like it knows Kevin’s talking about it. She swallows.

“So what, Kevin? She gave me back my brooch, yes. So _what?_”

“So what?” Kevin looks delighted. “Cheryl, this is huge! Why did she even _have _it? Are you _friends_? Are you—“

Cheryl slaps a hand across his mouth. Kevin’s eyes go wide.

“Don’t you remember this?” she hisses, though it sounds kind of wet. “Don’t you remember what it’s like to be in the fucking— everyone wants me to admit it, to come out — well I don’t fucking _want to_. I _can’t_, and it isn’t— it isn’t _fair, _and you all keep— I’m just trying to _have_ something, and I—"

She breaks off around the hitch in her throat. Kevin puts his hand around Cheryl’s wrist and pries it gently off his face.

“Oh, _Cheryl_,” he says, with feeling. “Shit, come here.”

He wraps his arms around her, and Cheryl slips hers around his waist, under his jacket. It’s her second hug of the day, but it — it feels nice. And it’s a nice shield from the cold winter air, so. That’s a plus.

“I remember,” he says, resting his chin on the top of her head. “It fucking sucks, right?”

Cheryl snorts into his stupid corduroy coat. He rubs a couple of circles on her back.

“I’m sorry, I just—“ he sighs. “When I came out, I wanted _so badly_ for it to not be a big deal. I tried _so_ hard to be accomodating for people so that we could all just go along as usual, you know? I was trying to — I wanted to offer that to you, I guess. But it’s okay that you want to treat it like a big deal, because it is.”

Cheryl squeezes her eyes shut, biting down hard on her lip. She can _not_ be having this breakdown right now, so instead she says: “She’s pretty fucking hot, right?"

Kevin laughs, and gives her a little squeeze. “Yeah, she totally is.”

She draws back, wiping at her eyes. “Thanks, Kevin. I guess you’re not a total cliché.”

Kevin shakes his head fondly. It’s why he’s one of her favourite people — Cheryl’s dramatics just seem to roll right off his shoulders. “Wow. Outstanding compliment from the embodiment of every high school mean queen trope.”

She rolls her eyes, train of thought breaking off as her phone buzzes, and Cheryl pulls it out of the waistband of her skirt, squinting down at the message.

** _Knock Off John Bender:_ ** _ got deets on ur whacko mom call me_

“I gotta do something,” she tells Kevin, hurriedly pulling up Jughead’s number and hitting dial, “Talk to you later?”

The phone clicks in her ear. “Jack’s mortuary,” says Jughead, “You stab ‘em, we slab ‘em.”

“You’re so annoying,” says Cheryl, as she waves _bye_ at Kevin. He wanders over to Betty and Veronica, slinging arms round their shoulders. “At least tell me you found something out.”

“Nothing, your mom’s squeaky clean.” Cheryl frowns. “Totally scary and maybe crazy, but clean. She did her physio and had her eyebrows dyed, went home for a little rough and tumble with _several_ Riverdale council members, including Betty's _d__ad_, gross, and now she’s at the Pep Rally. Is she a _hooker_?”

“She prefers dominatrix,” says Cheryl, eye roll evident in her tone. “It’s disgusting, I know. Go back to the bit about the Pep Rally?”

“Yeah, she’s here.”

“No she’s not,” says Cheryl.

“She totally is. Front row and everything.”

Cheryl turns back to the bleachers, searching for her. “What the fuck is she doing here?”

“Maybe supporting her only daughter? Her daughter who, as a fun coincidence, has had someone stalking her all day?”

“Shut up, Jughead,” snaps Cheryl, eyes landing on her mom. “She’s never come to a game for me.”

“Didn’t she come to the first one last year? And like, every other before that?”

Cheryl scoffs. “Do you just document all our movements like a weirdo? She came for _Jason_, not for me. She’s never done anything for me in her life.”

There’s a pause. “Heavy stuff,” says Jughead eventually. “You wanna elaborate on _why_ I’ve been tailing her all day?”

“Nope,” says Cheryl cheerfully, and hangs up. So her mom probably hasn’t enlisted the Black Hood to kill her, unless the Black Hood turns out to be Enrique the eyebrow guy at the beauty parlour. Still. Why is she at the _game?_

Cheryl goes through the cheer game as usual — she actually makes it to the end this time, which is a novelty, by not going to the bathroom at all. She’s deliberately dehydrated herself a bit just to ensure that she didn’t have to. She has to go to the lockers to change out of her uniform, but she makes sure to stick with Betty and Veronica, so that they can all leave together. They traipse across the oval making small-talk, until Cheryl grabs Veronica’s arm in fright.

“What? Cher?”

Cheryl blinks at the trees by the car park, and slowly releases her death grip on Veronica’s arm. “Sorry,” she says, feeling light-headed. She’s not sure she’s ever made it so far through a day. “I thought I saw—“

She breaks off, shaking her head. “Nothing, I guess. I’m just jumpy.”

Veronica and Betty both eye the trees with distrust.

“Wanna go round the back way?” asks Betty, only half-joking, but Veronica groans.

“Oh, come _on_, you babies,” she teases, and links her arms through theirs. “We can tackle any raccoons looking to terrorise the shit out of Cheryl.”

She tugs them in the direction of the car park, and Cheryl follows, still darting her eyes about. Her mouth feels dry. She could have _sworn_ she saw the Black Hood, and she probably _did_, he’s probably waiting for her to get by herself so he can kill her. She clutches a little tighter to Ronnie’s arm, and then has a horrible thought. The Black Hood had tried to kill Moose and Midge when they were together. What if he tries to get all three of them? He’s a psychopath, it might not be about Cheryl at _all_, just some weird, freaky power thing—

“You want a ride home, Cheryl?” asks Betty. “My dad’s picking me and Veronica up.”

Veronica looks up and down the car park, empty except for Cheryl’s car over by the front entrance. “Where’s the car, B? I thought he came to the game."

Betty shrugs. “He probably parked on the main road, I’ll text him. He hates trying to get out of car-parks.”

Cheryl listens to all of this with a vague sort of interest, still busy looking over her shoulders to make sure they’re alone. She should leave, get herself away from Betty and Veronica, but—

“Oh, yeah, he’s like two minutes away,” says Betty, looking down into the glow of her phone. “Sure you don’t want a lift, Cheryl?”

“No, it’s alright,” she says, and gestures at her car. “Um— I’ll walk you there, though.”

“Aw.” Veronica grins at her, touching her head to Cheryl’s shoulder affectionately, their arms still linked together. “You’re a big softie at heart, Cheryl.”

Cheryl manages a laugh. “As if. Come on, if we stand here any longer my tits are gonna freeze off.”

They make their way out of the carpark to the main road. Several cars down is one with the lights on and the engine running.

“That’s my dad,” says Betty, unlinking herself from Veronica. “We’ll be fine, Cheryl, don’t worry. See you Monday?”

“Bye, Cher,” says Veronica, and kisses her cheek. “Don’t get too scared by the raccoons!”

Cheryl watches them walk down to the car and get inside, before hurrying back to her own car. It’s nearly ten pm — the longest she thinks she’s mad it so far. Maybe this is it? She was, like, kind of nicer than usual? Could that have helped?

She thinks about going home, but decides not to risk it. Her murderer obviously knows where she lives, and he might’ve even gone straight there to wait for her after realising he wouldn’t be able to nab her at the Pep Rally. She drives around for a while, radio on (_not_ the _hackin’ whackin’ smackin’ _song, _thank god_, she might have had a meltdown), and eventually pulls into the parking lot of the movie theatre. The sign outside is advertising a late night showing of some horror film (because real life wasn’t tragic enough, apparently), and she can see several of her classmates milling around to catch it. It seems like a pretty safe bet.

She sits up near the back so she can prop her feet up on a seat, popcorn nestled in her lap. She’s got a pretty good vantage point at anyone coming in, and there’s an emergency exit behind her she can escape through. She’s actually feeling pretty good about her chances, an exhilarated thrill in her chest.

Somewhere through the third act, though, when Cheryl’s starting to doze off slightly from exhaustion (it’s nearing one in the morning and she just did a cheer routine, cut her some slack), something hooks around her neck from behind.

_Fuck_, thinks Cheryl. _Oh, you’ve gotta be _joking_._

Her popcorn goes flying out of her lap as she kicks at the seat in front, but unfortunately for her the girl on screen’s taken this moment to be murdered, too, and she’s screaming up a fright, making Cheryl's scuffle almost impossible to hear. Her nails scratch against her skin as she tries to get her fingers under the — shoelace? God, this guy’s so fucking cheap — but it’s no good. She reaches up behind her, searching for his face, and digs her fingers into the mask, tugging _hard_. She must grab some hair, because she hears a bitten off curse by her ear, but then she adjusts her grip and pulls again. The mask comes off. Cheryl blinks at it. She’s rapidly losing oxygen, can tell that she’s about to kick the bucket any second, but if she could just— if she could just turn slightly to the left, then she could…

The light from the movie washes over her as her hands start to go slack. Jason’s murdered corpse grins at her from the big screen. _That’s all, folks!_ _Catch the repeats at seven on Fridays! For the rest of your goddamn life! _

_Fuck you_, thinks Cheryl as her eyes slide closed. _I’m gonna kill you, you mask-wearing freak—_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok everybody!! this is just a note that it might take longer than usual for the next chapter bc its a big one. a BIG one. u might even be able to guess whats happening based on this one, idk. its incredibly toni heavy so if you've been missing her then hopefully thats something to look forward to<3 but it might take me a while bc i really wanna do it right. anyway. see you in like a week probably, i hope u liked this chapter well enough to tide u over!!<3


	8. friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so. i thought this day would be like. 4000 words? but then what ive got here is almost 3000, and as u can see we're only just getting started. anyway, its the cheryl & toni show, so i hope u enjoy!!<3

Cheryl comes to with a gasp, lifting slightly off the bed — Toni’s bed, all worn-soft sheets and flat pillows. She inhales and exhales a few times, steadying her breathing. Of all the ways she’s died so far, getting choked takes the cake for worst. Oh, maybe it’s not quite as painful as the knife, but the horrible moment where she teeters on the edge, vision going black — it sucks. It makes her think of Sweetwater River, of snow under her feet and ice in her heart. Cheryl licks her lips, shaking her head slightly, and sits up properly, trying to dispel the image. She pulls Toni’s comforter up around her as she sits, waiting. The time on her phone says 6:59, so any second now…

The marimba tone goes off, extra loud as her phone starts to vibrate on the table. Cheryl holds her breath, allowing the assault on her eardrums as she waits for—

“_Jesus_,” says Toni with feeling, entering through the bedroom door and kicking it shut behind her. She’s wincing slightly at the noise, face scrunched up. “Turn that ear-splitter off, would you?”

She comes over to the bed, glass of water and bottle of Tylenol in her hands. She rattles the pills enticingly as she approaches and Cheryl smiles, biting down on her bottom lip.

“Thank you, Toni,” she says, taking the water. Toni smiles back, a curious glint in her eye.

“What are you all smiley about?” she asks, and Cheryl shrugs, running her thumb over the rim of the glass, lips still trying desperately to tug upwards.

“Nothing.” She looks up at her, finally letting the smile come out in full force. “I just must have done something right, that’s all.”

Toni makes a face like she doesn’t know how to take that, and sits down next to her on the bed, their shoulders brushing. Cheryl’s so — oh, she’s so _glad_ to have her not be mad at her. The last few loops have been extra disheartening, trying and failing everything Cheryl’s been able to think of. Her loop with Toni had at least ended with _something_, and Cheryl would love (_love_) to have someone help her come up with a plan of attack. Plus: nobody knows that she spent the night with Toni. If she can just stay with her all day… maybe the Black Hood won’t be able to find her.

Toni bumps her shoulder gently with her own. “Well, you know. You were drinking a lot last night, I figured you could use those. Probably have a hell of a headache, right?”

“I do, thank you,” says Cheryl, popping two pills. She hadn’t realised until Toni said it, but her head actually _doesn’t_ hurt. It hasn’t for a few days. Weird — but yesterday had shown that maybe moods and feelings could carry over, so she supposes it makes sense for her headache to be clearing. She swallows a few mouthfuls of water and puts it on the bedside table. “Do you have a pen and paper?”

“Sure?” asks Toni, “There’s some on the desk.”

She gets up and hands Cheryl a notebook and pen, then sits back down on the bed — not next to her, but closer to the middle, criss-cross apple sauce like she’s expecting to stay there for a while. Cheryl wonders if her subconscious suspects what’s coming, if that’s the reason she doesn’t ask what Cheryl wants it for.

“Don’t look,” she says, tilting the notebook so it’s shielded from Toni’s view. “It’ll make sense in a second.”

_Yo, Toni,_ she writes, in loopy handwriting. She dots the _i_ with a heart, because she’s extra like that. _Please tell me you didn’t sleep with that bitch. And, you did._

_Dude, what the fuck?_

Then she rips the sheet of paper out and folds it into four so the words can’t be read. She gives it to Toni. “Hold onto that for a second?”

“Okay...” says Toni, fingering the paper curiously. “What’s this, then?”

“You’ll see.”

“Ominous,” jokes Toni, and Cheryl laughs too, looking down at her nails.

“Rather.”

They sit in silence for a few moments. It’s not _exactly_ uncomfortable, but Cheryl’s waiting, and that definitely imbues a little anticipation into the air that makes it feel vaguely awkward. Eventually Toni opens her mouth.

“So, listen,” she starts to say, picking at the bedspread, “about last night—“

“Yo, Toni!” Sweet Pea’s voice comes hollering down the hall alongside the slam of the front door, and Toni’s eyes widen just slightly. _Right on cue_, thinks Cheryl. “Please tell me last night you didn’t sleep with that bitch!”

The door swings, Sweet Pea’s lanky frame coming into view. He still has his hand on the doorknob, hanging off it in a way that makes Cheryl think of _Singing in the Rain_. “And, you did,” he says, unimpressed.

“Dude,” snaps Toni, jerking her head in Cheryl’s direction. “What the fuck? Get out!”

Sweet Pea holds up both his hands, backing out of the room. “I’m gonna eat all your cereal ‘cause ‘m fucking starving,” he calls over his shoulder. “Just so you know!”

“Fine, Jesus!” yells Toni, and winces when she looks back at Cheryl. “God, I’m sorry. Sweet Pea’s a tool and_ he sucks!_”

She shouts this back out in Sweet Pea’s direction, but Cheryl shakes her head. “It’s fine, really. I’m _well_ accustomed to such acts by now.”

Toni looks hesitant to accept this, but it doesn’t really bother Cheryl if Toni does or not — she’s got things to do. With a quick look at the open door, Cheryl finally gets out of bed, hastening over to gently close it. Toni stays where she is, but Cheryl leans back against the door, since she figures Toni might want some space for the bombshell she’s about to drop.

“Toni,” she says, seriously. Toni’s posture straightens a little at her tone. “I have to tell you something.”

“Okay.”

“I’m in _Groundhog Day_.”

Toni laughs. “What?”

“I’m serious.” Cheryl scrubs at the back of her neck. She _needs_ Toni to believe her. “Every day I wake up and it’s today. I’ve done this, like, eight times now.”

“Right,” says Toni warily. Cheryl sighs, and gestures to the paper.

“Look, I know it sounds totally cray-cray. But I’m telling the truth. I’ve woken up every day in your bed for a week, and _every_ day Sweet Pea bursts through that door, and he always says what he just did. Open the paper.”

Toni glances down at it like it’s a bomb threat, running her thumb over the edge. Then, with another hesitant glance at Cheryl, she opens it. Cheryl watches her eyes scan over the words, widening slightly. She looks back up at her.

“This is a joke, right?”

Cheryl gives her a grim smile. “It’s really not.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah.”

Cheryl pushes herself off the door, going back to sit on the bed opposite Toni, her legs tucked up underneath her. “Are you freaking out?”

Toni glances at her, pulling her eyes away from Cheryl’s handwriting. “Like, a bit?“

Cheryl pats her knee, carefully making sure she doesn’t linger. “Wanna go discuss it over breakfast?”

“I— alright? So long as you buy.”

It’s a teasing statement, so Cheryl says: “My company isn’t enough?”

Toni finally cracks a smile, though it’s kind of incredulous. “For this?” She motions with the paper. “Definitely not.”

Cheryl grins back. Toni’s smart, and capable, and in a gang. And if she takes less convincing this time, then the two of them might _actually_ stand a chance of getting Cheryl through this day. She plucks at Toni’s t-shirt. “Can I borrow this? And maybe some jeans?”

“Sure,” says Toni, getting off the bed and gathering up the pills and glass. “Don’t want you looking like you’re doing a walk of shame.”

She’s smiling as she says it, but it still hits Cheryl the wrong way. She grabs Toni’s arm.

“I’m not,” she says, and Toni’s eyebrows twitch up, just a little bit.

“Okay,” Toni says. “Pants are in the bottom of the dresser. I’m gonna go tell Sweet Pea what’s happening.”

While Toni does that, Cheryl sorts through her drawers for something to wear. Most of Toni’s clothes are a little too flannelette-aesthetic for her, but she finds some decent enough black jeans to pull on. She cuts a glance out Toni’s window, at the grey, dreary skies, and shivers instinctively. God, she can’t wait to get out of this day — no way could she live trapped in November forever. Then she pokes around for a jacket. Toni’s _Serpent_ one is still splayed dover the dress, and she rests her hand over it for a second. But, no.

“Numbskull,” whispers Cheryl to herself, yanking her hand away. What the hell is she thinking?

Veronica tries calling her right before Toni comes back into the room, but Cheryl denies the call — she doesn’t need a lift today. Toni doesn’t change out of her yoga pants, instead just pulls a Southside High sweatshirt and her _Serpent_ jacket on over her tank top. Her hair is still kind of messy from sleep, curling at the ends, and she’s got faint lines of blue under her eyes. She looks… vulnerable. Cheryl nearly forgets how to breathe at the sight.

“Ready?” asks Toni, cocking an eyebrow. Cheryl grins.

“Born ready, Tee Tee.”

***

They take Toni’s motorcycle to Pop’s, Cheryl seated on the back and gripping Toni’s waist for dear life. She thinks, vaguely, that it should be sexy, or at least comforting, to be forced into basically cuddling for twenty minutes. It’s not. It’s scary and cold and Cheryl can’t see shit with her hair flying into her eyes, and when she eventually presses her face into Toni’s shoulder to avoid looking at the road, it’s to be hit with a billion images of how Toni could end the Black Hood’s task for him, right now, by taking a corner wrong and throwing the both of them off the bike.

“That is a _death trap_,” Cheryl is hissing as they enter in the blissfully warm Pop’s. “I think some of my organs are still back at your house.”

Toni throws her head back, laughing. Like before, Cheryl feels a bit of pride at the fact that she can get her to — she thinks the last person who actually laughed with her was Jay Jay, and that still would have been well before his death.

“Come on,” Cheryl tugs her to one of the back booths. Theirs knees touch under the table. “You want a fruit toast and strawberry milkshake, right?”

Toni stares at her. “How_…_?”

“_Groundhog Day_,” reminds Cheryl, perusing the menu thoughtfully. “You and I have done this before.”

“Huh,” says Toni. “Anything else we’ve done?”

Cheryl purses her lips to avoid smiling. “Yelled at each other, mostly. There was some flirting at the start, though. That was fun.”

“I’ll bet,” says Toni, still studying her. “We’ll have to do more of that.”

Cheryl does smile, then, and calls over the waitress. “I’ll have the breakfast burger, please. Courtesy of Archie Andrews’ recommendation. And Toni will have—“

“The eggs Benedict,” interrupts Toni, handing the waitress her menu. “And a hot chocolate, thank you.”

She grins at Cheryl’s raised eyebrows, and shrugs lightly. “You were looking a little full of yourself, over there. Can’t have you thinking you know everything about me.”

They make small talk for ten minutes or so before their food arrives — Pop is _especially_ on the ball this morning. Cheryl supposes it’s for the steady flow of customers. It’s not exactly busy, but there are a few people in, most of whom look like regulars. Once their food’s there, though, Toni immediately dives head first into the questioning.

“All right,” she says, and then it’s a no-holds-barred stream of questions, like how and why Cheryl’s in this mess.

“I don’t _know_,” says Cheryl empathically at one point. “That’s why I need _you_. All I know is that I can never escape getting killed, so I’m guessing that’s got something to do with it.”

“Well, at least _somebody_ up there doesn’t want you dead.”

“_Somebody_ up there just forgot to push the button to start Saturday. I’m probably only a casualty.”

“Glitch in the Matrix,” says Toni solemnly, and shovels a forkful of eggs into her mouth. Cheryl tells her about the re-dos she’s had so far as best as she can re-call, skipping out on the details and just covering the gist — who she talked to, how she died, whether she’d done anything super differently. Toni’s eyebrows go up when she mentions the whole _consequences_ thing, but she doesn’t say what’s clearly at the forefront of her brain right now. After recounting her experience at the movie theatre, Cheryl takes a long sip of her coffee.

“So,” she says. “Do you believe me?”

Toni screws up her face.

“I mean,” she says. “It’s convincing, don’t get me wrong. But you and Sweet Pea could have planned this, I don’t know. Decided what he was going to say.”

Cheryl’s eyes nearly roll back into her head. “We could have planned for me to get drunk and go home with you just so that the next day we could pretend I was living in a time-loop? For no real reason at all?”

Toni shrugs, weakly, and takes a bite of bacon. “Well, you could’ve.”

“Not to mention I’ve never even _looked_ at Sweet Pea before I started seeing his ugly mug every morning,” continues Cheryl. “You’re a much prettier face to see first thing.”

Toni blinks at her. Cheryl sighs and tosses her hair over her shoulder. The movement reveals her spider brooch pinned to her top, and Toni’s gaze darts down to it. She’d deliberately grabbed it from the table that morning, just for this moment. She wanted to make sure Toni would be thinking of it when she asked her question, since that’s what had happened the first time they tried this. It’s the biggest gun in Cheryl’s arsenal — she really, _really_ needs it to be right.

“Okay,” says Cheryl, folding her hands atop one another. “You and I prepared for this on Day Four. I want you to imagine that I’m telling the truth, and then think of something you’d have me tell you to make sure it was true. Preferably something nobody else could know.”

“Alright,” says Toni, thoughtfully. Her eyes drop down to the table, then the window, then to Cheryl’s chest. “Okay, got it.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you thinking my spider brooch should belong to a Disney villain?”

Toni’s mouth drops open. “Oh, what the _fuck_,” she says. “No fucking way.”

“_Way_.” Cheryl dabs at her mouth with her napkin. “I know it’s a total mind spin, so take your time.”

Toni looks at her for several minutes. Then she downs the rest of her hot chocolate in one hit like it’s a shot of whiskey, even wincing at the end, and slams it back on the table, eyes screwed shut.

“Nope,” she says. “I hate this. _So_ much.”

“Imagine how I feel,” says Cheryl, checking the time on her phone. It’s 8:48, just past the beginning of school hours. “I’m the one who’s _living_ it.”

“_Shit_,” whispers Toni. “Cheryl, holy _shit!_”

Then her face pales. “Holy fuck, so are you—? Are you going to get murdered?”

“Probably,” says Cheryl, nonchalant. “I’m pretty used to it. Although I’ll admit that I was kind of hoping I could just, like, try and wait for it to all blow over at your place. The Black Hood definitely knows where I live.”

“Shit,” says Toni again. “Jesus, you really pissed somebody off.”

“I know.”

Toni picks up her knife and fork and takes a bite of her eggs, although by the face she makes they've probably gone a little cold. “So do you know everything that’s going to happen?” she asks, and Cheryl nods.

“Kind of. Well, for my nearest and dearest, at least. And that’s assuming I haven’t done anything to change it — it’s weird, but sometimes even tiny things make a difference.”

“How many times have you done this?”

Cheryl hums. “Ten? Nine, maybe. I think it’s day nine.”

Toni looks surprised. “Oh. I thought it’d be more than that.”

Cheryl shakes her head. “Yeah, well, believe me, when you start thinking about it nine is _enough_. I don’t need to be stuck in here for a thousand days to get the message — it’s been well received.”

“Yeah,” says Toni, her eyes suddenly going sad. She bites her lip, and then reaches out to put her hand on Cheryl’s forearm. “We’re gonna get you out of this, Cheryl.”

Cheryl gives her a wry smile, but. She kind of believes her. It’s early morning, she’s still got hours before the Pep Rally, and, more than that, she’s got Toni on her side. Together, she’s sure, the two of them can figure out a plan that will hopefully, even if it doesn’t prevent her murder, unmask the Black Hood and actually let her leave this re-do with some goddamn _information_ for once.

“So,” says Toni, knocking Cheryl’s ankle with her own. “You wanna head back to my place, watch a shit ton of movies and hide out from a serial killer?”

Cheryl grins at her. “I’d love to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hopefully this wasnt TOO much of a chapter 4 rehash....i love them and i also resisted doing a cliffhanger bc im nice <33 i know this one took a while for me to post, this day is a bitch and hard to write and im sorry!!!! ive been procrastinating it!!


	9. friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, three weeks later:.....oops!
> 
> warning for this chapter is a major character death due to homophobia. it's the same level as all the other violence in this fic, but be careful.

“I am begging you to not drive so fast this time,” says Cheryl as they leave Pop’s, glancing distrustfully at Toni’s rust-bucket of motorcycle. “You’re not Mad Max.”

Toni grins at her, seeming to delight in Cheryl’s apprehension. She hooks one leg over the bike and glides into the seat in a fluid, practiced motion, looking at Cheryl over her shoulder while she buckles her helmet. “You just hold on, baby,” she flirts, “I’ll get you there.”

Cheryl blushes, and slips onto the bike behind her, her thighs bracketing Toni’s.

“Buy me a drink first,” she says without bite, feeling lighter than she has in — _weeks._ Months, even. Since well before the first loop. She puts her hands gently on Toni’s waist, half expecting Toni to push them off, to read Cheryl’s _deviance_ in her touch, but Toni doesn’t do anything of the sort. Instead, she flicks the keys and revs the engine, manoeuvring them out of the carpark.

Riverdale’s quiet this morning, like always. She supposes it’s still early, just before nine o’clock, but it’s still kind of unnerving. It’s like the town _knows_. Or maybe Cheryl’s just reading into it, seeing her own paranoia reflected in her surroundings. The Black Hood could be anyone, around any corner, she’s bound to have her vision tainted with suspicion. Despite her teasing, Toni takes the trip back at a slower pace, and Cheryl’s eyes glide over the people and the houses in turn. _Is it you? Is that the Black Hood’s house? Does he have a family? Wife? Kids? Is it the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker?_ Cheryl swallows and averts her eyes, shoulders hunching in because she’s peering into these people’s lives, sure, but it also feels kind of like they’re peering back.

They’re on their way out of Riverdale’s centre when everything goes, objectively, to absolute shit. Truly new levels of fucked up that’ll have Cheryl retching for the rest of the day and then some, and maybe on some level she knows what’s coming and that’s why her breakfast is churning like butter in her stomach, or maybe it’s just Toni’s motorbike. But they’re nearing Betty’s street, a route Cheryl’s only vaguely familiar with, and she spots red and blue flashes between the trees. The hair on the back of her neck stands up.

“Wait, Toni,” says Cheryl, squeezing her waist to get her attention, but Toni’s already slowing down, pulling closer to the curb.

“I see ‘em,” she says over her shoulder, and Cheryl feels sick. She just _knows_ that something awful has happened, because she’s sure she would have found out if this had happened any other day. Toni pulls the motorbike to stop at the road junction, and Cheryl scrambles to get off the bike, her pulse beating out a samba under her skin. An ambulance races past her, sending her and Toni’s hair flying.

“Cheryl—“ says Toni, kicking down the bike’s stand. Cheryl’s already jogging down the road, to the police cars fifty yards away. “Cheryl, just wait a second—“

It’s Betty’s _street_, though that doesn’t have to mean—

But it is Betty’s house.It’s Betty’s house, with it’s white weatherboards and blue door and perfectly trimmed hedges that Cheryl has always personally thought look a bit plastic, and smack bang around it, cordoning off the gateway and part of the road, are bright yellow bits of police tape. Crime scene. Cheryl sways, and it’s like two scenes of her life overlap for a second. In the first, she’s standing outside Betty’s house, but in the second its memories of Sweetwater River and Detective Keller and that damned _boat_, and the whole goddamn town watching her life fall apart.

“You need to step back,” says a man, grabbing at her arm, and Cheryl realises she’s ducked under the tape. “This is the scene of a potential homicide, you can’t be here.”

_Homicide_. Cheryl gapes. The man — policeman, it’s a deputy — takes advantage of her shock to push her back a few steps, arm strong around her waist, forcing her back outside the scene, among the rest of the neighbours gathered. “Miss...”

“I don’t,” says Cheryl, stunned, and licks her lips. “What happened?”

“That’s currently unclear,” says the policeman. “If you could just remain on this side of the tape...”

“Cheryl.” Toni’s hand slides onto her lower back, her voice out of breath now she’s caught up with her. She pushes the policeman’s arm off of Cheryl, and replaces it with her own.“I’ve got her, it’s fine. Cheryl, just come away for a second, okay?”

Cheryl lets herself be led. But she can’t stop looking at the house. _Homicide_. “It’s Betty’s,” she whispers, blinking. “It’s Betty’s. What did I—“

“You didn’t do anything,” says Toni, rubbing Cheryl’s arm, but Cheryl knows the truth. The _phone call_. She hadn’t called Veronica, hadn’t gotten the lift in Betty’s shitty Volvo, and instead Betty had come here, come home, and somehow that meant… Toni tugs her slightly more insistently. “Look, let’s— over there, isn’t that Jughead’s friend? Archie? He might be able to tell us what’s happening.”

Cheryl snaps her gaze to Archie’s house. Sure enough, Archie is on the steps, his head in his hands, still as a rock, like a painting. There’s a strip of blood on his forearm. Her mouth runs dry.

“Oh no,” she says, breaking away from Toni’s hold. “No, no, no...”

“Archie?” Archie looks up, blinking at her, eyes unfocused. “What’s happened? Did, like, Mrs Cooper have one of her fits and you had to call for domestic disturbance or did—did something else—“

Her voice cracks. “I saw the ambulance— Archie—“

Archie looks up at her. He looks so _tired_, thinks Cheryl, deep lines of blue scored in the skin under his eyes, flesh drawn tight over his cheek bones.

“Betty,” he says, rough, and Cheryl staggers back. “That was Betty. She— there was yelling, so I went over, but I was too— Mr Cooper didn’t know her and Veronica were dating— and he’d—“

Archie breaks off, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. “It was like fucking— it was like being in the diner all over again, or hearing the gunshot at Sweetwater River, I just— I _knew_.”

Toni puts a shaking hand on Cheryl’s back. “Archie,” says Cheryl, “You’re not making sense.”

“There was an ambulance,” he says, looking at his feet. “But they only—only Betty came out. She was all beaten up. He’d hit her.”

Archie clenches his fists, the bones of his knuckles sticking out against pink skin. “They took her away, but Veronica…”

Cheryl looks back at Betty’s house. “Ronnie?”

“She was there,” says Archie, voice wet. “We heard her— screaming. But she hasn’t. Come out. And that’s not— that’s not _good_, is it.”

“Homicide,” says Cheryl, teetering on her feet. “They said. They said _homicide_.”

“Yeah,” says Archie, and starts crying. “The police put Mr Cooper in a car…”

Archie keeps talking, like now he’s started he can’t stop, telling Toni (because Cheryl’s not really listening, not anymore) that he’d finally gone over there just before the ambulance arrived, that they’d forced him back out, but in Cheryl’s head all she can see is Veronica with a knife in her chest, strangled in a movie theatre, gun shot to the head. All the ways Cheryl’s died so far. But to Ronnie.

“Veronica—“ yells Cheryl, because maybe they’re _wrong_, maybe Veronica’s just wrapped up inside in a shock blanket, complaining about the ugly orange colour. But everything’s blurry like it was at the river, Jason’s waterlogged body emerging from it’s depths. Distantly she’s aware that she’s fighting to get past the tape again, but Toni grabs her waist, barely hoisting her off the ground.

“Archie,” Toni yelps, and Archie must get up, because he’s also wrapping arms around Cheryl, holding her back. Cheryl can’t see, she’s crying so hard, vision streaky with black mascara. She sobs into Archie’s shoulder, and he does the same. Cheryl sobs and sobs and sobs, even though she doesn’t quite — it’s not quite _real_ for her, yet. She hasn’t comprehended it. Can’t comprehend it. The idea that Veronica is anything but a phone call away...

“I have to go see Betty,” says Cheryl eventually, into Archie’s jacket. “I have to go see her. Right now.“

Archie can’t come, because the police want to question him, so Cheryl leaves him on his porch, his dad en route from work. Toni holds her hand all the way back to the motorcycle, hard enough to bruise. When she lets go, there are four white spots pressed into Cheryl’s skin. Somewhere on the journey Cheryl hardens up — Veronica is _not_ dead, and there’s a crisis. Cheryl Blossom doesn’t buckle under crises. She has things to do, and by jove if she isn’t going to do them.

It’s eerily familiar to be walking Riverdale General’s halls in the wake of such an event, even if it’s different with Toni at her side. Toni seems reluctant to leave her, which Cheryl can’t spare a thought to analyse, not yet. She’s just glad for the company.

“I’m here to see Betty Cooper,” she announces at the front desk, and the clerk looks up at her. Without meaning to, Cheryl says: “I’m family.”

The nurse studies her for a second. “Betty Cooper? Do you mean Elizabeth?”

“That’s right. She was just brought in.”

The nurse clacks away on her keyboard. The computer feels slightly out of place in Riverdale General, where the staff still wear their get-ups from the fifties and the decor hasn’t changed in decades, and then the nurse offers Cheryl a visitor’s sheet to sign. “Alright. Your friend will have to wait here, though.”

She’s looking at Toni. Cheryl opens her mouth to object — like _hell_ is she leaving Toni by herself — but Toni says:

“It’s alright. I’ll wait for you here, okay?”

Cheryl frowns, but takes the offered pen from the nurse and scribbles her signature (a great, declarative swoop) on the paper. The ink glints under the hospital lights. “Okay. Keep an eye out for suspicious types.”

Toni gives her a little salute, hand slipping from Cheryl’s. “I’ll be right here.”

***

Alice Cooper blocks the opening to Betty’s private ward with her whole body, one hand wrapped tight around the doorway. Her nails are pink and long, but she’s only done the one coat, so the polish is slightly sheer and Cheryl can tell her nails are brittle underneath it. Cheryl narrows her eyes at her, matching Alice’s glare, and juts her chin up. She’s shorter than usual since she borrowed Toni’s trainers, but Cheryl’s death glare skills go _way_ beyond using her height as an intimidation tactic.

“I want to see Betty,” she repeats, crossing her arms. She widens her stance a bit, refusing to budge. Mrs Cooper makes a face like Cheryl’s offered dog shit to her.

“She’s sleeping,” she says, deep lines around her eyes and in her brow.

“Bullshit,” says Cheryl, because she can literally _see Betty_ looking at her over Mrs Cooper’s shoulder. She shuts the door in Cheryl’s face, and Cheryl waits for a few seconds, tapping her foot on the linoleum floor, then raises her hand to wrap on the door again. Alice opens it.

“Five minutes,” she snaps, and lets Cheryl in. The room inside is dark, curtains drawn, and Betty is propped up on the bed, still in the pink sweater and shirt combo Cheryl’s seen her in the past week. She’s holding an icepack to her neck. Cheryl darts a look at Mrs Cooper, and Alice sighs.

“_Five minutes_,” she repeats, and gathers up her purse. “Betty, press the call button if this… _vulture_ threatens you in _any way_.”

Cheryl debates making a face because, like, _rude_, but it’s a distant concern, conducted discreetly under her current fears and worries. A remnant of her old self, who existed without knowing what it was like to die nine times over. Alice leaves, giving Cheryl one last stink-eye, and the instant the door shuts Cheryl rushes to the bed, heaving a great exhalation of air.

“_Betty_,” she says, and touches Betty’s arm, squeezing gently before thinking she might be injured, and letting go. She sits in the chair drawn up to the bedside, presumably by Betty’s mom. Betty gives her a weak smile, tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. The gesture contorts the ugly, purple-red swelling of her cheek, and turns into a wince.

“How’s Veronica?” she asks.

Cheryl swallows. “I haven’t seen her.” Not technically a lie. “Betty, it’s really important that you tell me what happened.”

Betty breathes out, leaning back against her pillows. Her voice is soft and tired. “It’s like a dream,” she says. “Vee and I went by my house this morning, to pick up my fucking… history textbook, I don’t even remember. We were just being _silly_, Ronnie had had another drink, and we were… she kissed me. My dad saw.

“He just went — ballistic. I’ve never seen him so angry. He started yelling about the Lodge’s about their, their _kind_, how Veronica was _corrupting_ me. I yelled back, and he hit me.” She gestures to the bruise blossoming on her cheek, and tries to smile. A tiny (_tiny_) bit of pride seeps into her next sentence. “Veronica was _so_ fucking pissed. She started screaming and trying to hit my dad, but he… he threw her? And she hit the, um. She hit the counter-top. On her way down.”

“It made such a loud _noise_,” adds Betty, quietly. She looks up at Cheryl with big, doe eyes, picking at her nail beds. The skin is raw and red and angry, and there are deep marks in each of her palms. “She’s okay, right? My mom won’t tell me anything, and I am freaking the _hell_ out. When I tried to get to her my dad hit me again, and then Archie and the police were there and they were whisking me away, saying I had concussion.”

Cheryl averts her eyes at Betty’s question, biting down on her lip hard enough to draw blood when Betty’s voice cracks. When she finally meets Betty’s eye, just briefly, she thinks Betty already knows.

“Cheryl…”

“She’ll be fine,” says Cheryl, looking at Betty’s pink jumper. “She _will_ be fine, Betty. I’ll fix it.”

She wonders if they’ve given Betty a drug, or sedative maybe. That’s the only reason she can think of for why Betty’s eyes look so glazed over, why she isn’t fighting tooth and nail to get out of this freaking hospital bed. Betty leans her head back.

“He called me a sinner,” she whispers, and Cheryl’s chest goes cold. _Deviant_. “My dad.”

“I’m so sorry, Betty. Your dad and my mother… they’re well-suited.”

Betty scrunches up her face, voice exhausted. “God, don’t remind me of that. It’s so… gross. Incesty.” She twists her fingers together on top of her stomach, so they look like tree roots, gnarled and tangled. “Dad wasn’t even supposed to _be_ at home. Since the separation. He wanted something from the basement.”

She closes her eyes. “If I’d only just… I knew he wouldn’t be _pleased_, but I never… fuck.”

Behind her, Cheryl hears the click of the door, and knows her time’s up. She stands, and, resting one hand on the bed frame, leans over to kiss Betty’s forehead. Betty whimpers.

“I’m going to fix this, Betty,” she says. “Promise. For Ronnie.”

She leaves Betty’s room, and gives herself a few minutes to stand with her back to the wall, crying silent tears into her hand. Then she heads back to Toni.

She's got some dying to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ......so i killed veronica.......
> 
> i always feel bad interrupting the choni for plot but if i did this day as one chapter it would have taken, like, two months to post (i know so far it's taken half that, but shhh). please let me know what you thought bc ive known this was going to happen since i started so thats been kind of fun?? making a plan and sticking to it is actually rewarding?? who knew!


	10. friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for discussion of suicide

Before Cheryl enters the waiting room, she hesitates for a moment, eyes on Toni. She’s reading a magazine, or pretending to. Her shoulders are drawn tight, foot tapping out a jittery rhythm on the floor, and Cheryl suddenly feels bad for dragging her into this. She didn’t even _know_ Toni before this, and now somehow Cheryl’s made her her principle bearer of emotional support.

She could leave, she thinks. She could let Toni live her life and maybe that would be better, spare her from Cheryl’s drama. She’s not even sure Toni likes her. For all Cheryl knows, in Toni’s eyes Cheryl could just be last night’s leftovers, the annoying girl who woke up in her bed this morning.

Well, thinks Cheryl, and steels herself. She’s always been selfish. The cherry blossom doesn’t fall far from the tree, and all that.

Toni’s head snaps up as Cheryl walks over to her, the magazine she was looking at falling into her lap. Cheryl doesn’t know if she’s imagining it, but she thinks Toni looks more tired than she did a few loops ago, like the endless repeats are taking their toll on more than just Cheryl. “How is she?”

“Not good,” says Cheryl, and sinks into the chair next to her. She pivots to the left, leaning her head on Toni’s shoulder. She has to crouch low in the chair to do so, but it’s nice. Toni takes her hand, her cheek pressed against Cheryl’s forehead, and Cheryl thinks: _she does. She does like me. She wouldn’t put up with all this out of pity._

“I’m so sorry, Cheryl,” Toni says, and Cheryl feels the movement of her lips. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”

Cheryl closes her eyes. If she thinks about Veronica too long— well. She daren’t. Especially when it is _not_ permanent. Life has taken a lot from her — her brother, her mother’s love, _tomorrow_. She will not let it take Veronica. “It’s alright.”

“It really isn’t.”

They sit in silence for a while. The hospital chairs aren’t comfortable, and neither is the hardware on Toni’s jacket, but it isn’t awful. Eventually, Cheryl says:

“I’m going to have to kill myself.”

Toni stiffens. It’s a delightfully simple solution, one that’s been clear to Cheryl ever since she closed the door on Betty’s room. All she has to do is reset this day, something she’s done copious times already, and everything will restore itself to the natural order, and Veronica will still be restored to the picture of perfect health. Toni very gently unclasps her hand from Cheryl’s, and Cheryl sits up, prepared for a fight. But it’s the only way.

“Cheryl,” Toni says, eyes pained. Cheryl twists in her seat, their knees knocking together, and smiles at her.

(Probably _not_ what Toni wants to see, but points for trying.)

“I’m right,” she says, kindly, “don’t you see? If I die, then none of this counts. And, believe me, I’m _done_ dying at the Black Hood’s hands. The sooner I do it the better, too, I don’t want to take any risks missing my cut off.”

Toni’s looking at her with extreme skepticism, her eyes darting about to the nurses. Cheryl thinks of_ that place_, the brochure her mother left on her bed one time. _Nurses who will make you better,_ Mother had said. _Who will stop these silly notions entering your head._ Cheryl grabs both Toni’s hands, determined to dispel any similar notions from Toni’s head.

“_Toni_. I’ll come back, okay? _Veronica _will come back. You won’t even know it’s happened.”

“You said there were consequences,” warns Toni, but Cheryl shakes her head.

“Pssh. It’s only a quick suicide—“ Toni flinches “—it’ll barely count. And it’s not like I’m going to try drowning myself in the river again, god no. I was cold for weeks. Believe me, this will be a highly civilised affair.”

Toni’s grip goes knuckle-white on her hands. “_Cheryl_,” she says, worryingly, pupils blown wide. “_Listen _to yourself right now. You’re in shock.”

Ice clamps around Cheryl’s chest, and her breathing starts to seize up. The tightrope she’s been walking on since this morning (three days ago, her whole freaking life) wobbles under her feet, her balance as precarious as it usually is. _God_, is she going to have to get some freaking anxiety meds as well as her sleeping pills? This fucking _sucks_, everyone already thinks she’s a head-case, she doesn’t need to add any other diagnoses to the mix. When she speaks, her voice comes out dull and pathetic.

“You don’t believe me,” she gets out, throat tight. “You don’t think I’ll come back, you were just— humouring me, you don’t trust me, nobody does.”

“No,” says Toni, pleading. “Cheryl, that’s not what I’m saying, okay? But you’re in shock, you can’t make decisions like that right now.”

“And what do you _want_ me to do?” snaps Cheryl, pulling her hands out of Toni’s grasp. “Just sit around and wait until I wake up _tomorrow_ with a dead Veronica? No siree Mister! I’ll do what I fucking— what I fucking—”

Her breathing picks up, vision going dark and spotty. Jesus Christ, is she _dying_? Is she fucking dying in this hospital room? There’s a spot of irony for her. Cheryl laughs, choking on the sound, and only then becomes aware that Toni’s vacated her seat to crouch in front of her.

“Cheryl,” she says, firmly, and grabs her face with her hands. They’re cold, and they press Cheryl’s cheeks upwards slightly, probably squishing her face unattractively. “Look at me. You’re having a panic attack. You understand?”

Cheryl nods, and tries to focus on Toni’s face. Toni’s eyes are huge, sparkling in the hospital lights, and Cheryl feels like she’s going to pass out.

“I want you to look at me,” she says, tilting Cheryl’s face. “Hey. Cheryl. Look at me!”

Cheryl closes her eyes, breathes, and opens them. She looks at Toni.

“You are going to breathe,” enunciates Toni, their eyes locked. “I’m going to count, and you’re going to breathe, okay? You’re doing good, Cheryl. So good. That’s it. I want you to breathe in, two, three, four, out, two, three, four. In—“

Cheryl follows the directions. Toni’s thumbs swipe frantically across her cheeks, her fingers digging into her face, but she keeps talking and Cheryl listens to her, taking oxygen into her lungs and then breathing it back out again. She sways forward, her forehead connecting with Toni’s, and lets herself rest there.

“I’ve got you,” says Toni, “You’re okay, Cheryl. I’ve got you.”

Cheryl shuts her eyes, breathing in and out. This is such a fucking mess. Toni’s hands move to her temples, stroking her hair.

“You gotta calm down, Cheryl,” she says. “I do believe you, alright? I do. Promise. But you’re not thinking clearly and I can’t let you make those kinds of decisions when you’re three seconds away from another panic attack, okay?”

“You don’t understand—“ starts Cheryl, but Toni says:

“Just _think_ _about it_. The Black Hood’s gone, he’s in prison. You’re not gonna die today. You should — this is to your advantage. If you kill yourself now, you’re just gonna wake up and be thrust right back into today, right? But you’ve got hours ahead of you right now that you could use to plan.”

Cheryl frowns, pulling away from Toni and looking down at her. Toni’s not making sense — the Black Hood in jail? He’ll still be waiting for her at the Pep Rally, or on the road, or in Cheryl’s bedroom. Unless she means...

“What? You think Betty’s _dad_ is the Black Hood?”

Toni makes a face. “Uh, yeah? Obviously?”

“What?”

“Come on,” says Toni, raising her eyebrows. “History of violent assault —_homophobic_ violent assault — and you spent all of last night in _Innuendo_, remember? Maybe he picked you as a target then, decided to fucking, I don’t know, enact some messed up revenge fantasies. Is that not what you’re thinking?”

_Holy shit_, thinks Cheryl.

“Holy shit,” she says, and it’s like the clouds over her head part. Toni’s right, it makes sense, and even if it doesn’t he’s still probably the best lead Cheryl’s got. And Betty said—

“Oh my god,” says Cheryl, feeling sick. “Betty said he called her a sinner.”

“There you go,” says Toni, grim. “I used to sneak into the criminal psychology lectures over at Greendale College. Basic stuff, but that sounds like a complex to me. A cleansing kind of thing. Religious. Aren’t they Catholic? Classic serial killer shit.”

“Jesus,” whispers Cheryl. “Okay. You— you’ll help me make a plan? To stop him?”

“Said I would, didn’t I?” says Toni, and pulls her to her feet. “Let’s go home first, though. I need a fucking drink.”

***

Cheryl doesn’t think Toni’s handling this particularly well. Partly it’s ‘cause her hands are shaking, and partly it’s because she keeps trying to hold Cheryl together, checking in with her constantly and bustling about like a busy bee. But mostly it’s the way she skulls down two shots at half ten in the morning.

“You’re the one living it over and over,” says Toni when Cheryl brings it up, and Cheryl shakes her head. She picks the shot glass (nicked from some bar, by the looks of it) up daintily with her thumb and forefinger, holding it away from her, and deposits it in the sink.

“Doesn’t mean your feelings aren’t important.”

Toni huffs a little laugh, rubbing her brow. “You are full of surprises, you know that?”

Cheryl smiles. “I know.”

Toni brings out a roll of baking paper from one of her kitchen drawers, and spreads it over the counter, pushing her fruit bowl to the side. Receipts, phone chargers and some of her schoolwork get piled up and deposited on the floor. She grabs a Sharpie and, the cap clasped between her teeth, scrawls _Fucking the Black Hood Up_ in loopy handwriting in the centre.

“There,” she says, pleased. “Okay.”

Cheryl watches her as she draws arrows out from the centre. Her hair is back to being pushed off her face with a bandana, and there’s a little pinch in her brow.

“This is what I’m thinking,” says Toni as she writes. “We need to figure out where to get evidence on the Black Hood. That’s probably gonna be at Betty’s house, right? I don’t know how we could get in there with the police cordoning off the scene.”

Cheryl presses her lips together, thinking, and Toni continues. “Or we have to figure out how to stop him while he’s actually attacking you.”

Cheryl shakes her head. “Won’t work. I tried it with Archie once, and ended up stabbed in the stomach.”

“Yeah, well,” says Toni, and makes a face. “I think I’m a _little_ more reliable than one of Jughead’s friends.”

“Jealous?” jokes Cheryl, tiredly. Toni flushes a bit, and Cheryl goes warm.

“What I really need,” continues Cheryl, “is to be able to stop him when he attacks me. But he always has the knife, and I know jack shit about defending myself. Unless I could have my bow, but… that’d never work in close combat.”

Toni’s eyebrows hitch up her forehead, and she gives Cheryl a quick once-over that she maybe tries to make subtle. “Huh. Okay, so, we’re definitely gonna circle back around to _that_ one, but I think I have an idea.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” says Toni, and grins at her. “God, I can’t wait. Hand me my phone?”

***

Cheryl is sitting at the kitchen counter, drumming her nails on their folded up mind-map, and watching Toni try and wrangle her delinquent friend into helping them out. Sweet Pea looks suitably thrown off guard by the situation he’s found himself in. He doesn’t look _quite_ like a deer on ice, and Cheryl’s been amusing herself by thinking up other similes for it, but the sentiment is good enough. She waves at him. He narrows his eyes.

“We’re going to teach her to defend herself,” Toni is saying at Cheryl’s shoulder, “And it’s gonna sound really weird, so you just have to ignore it and trust me on this.”

Sweet Pea looks back and forth between them.

“Toni,” he begins, but Toni cuts him off.

“Sweet Pea! No questions, remember? You owe me one.”

_What_, exactly, Sweet Pea owes Toni isn’t clarified for her, but Cheryl guesses it must be big by the way his eyebrows shoot up like startled caterpillars.

“You’re using it on _her_?” he says, and Cheryl purses her lips.

“Um, _right here_, thank you?”

“Yeah, I can see that,” he snaps. “The rich bitch attitude is dripping off you.”

“_Sweet Pea,_” growls Toni, and Cheryl narrows her eyes. Without breaking eye contact with him, she says:

“Toni? I think the best way to learn is to just be thrown into it. Should I punch him in the face or the stomach?”

Toni hesitates. Sweet Pea stares at her some more. Then he lets out a big guffaw of laughter, shaking his head. He reaches out and offer a hand to Cheryl, silver rings glinting on his fingers. Cheryl reaches out and takes it. Making friends with Toni’s pals is going to be easier than expected, if all she has to do is apply her Jughead-formula to them.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” says Toni, apparently realising that Sweet Pea and Cheryl are already bonding. “Don’t become friends.”

“Tough luck, Toni,” responds Cheryl, and grins at her, her tongue poking out between her teeth. She wipes her hands on Toni’s tea-towel, removing the smudges of motor oil Sweet Pea had left on her, and gets to her feet. “Lets get this show on the road.”

Together they clear Toni’s living room as much as they can, pushing the furniture to the walls, Sweet Pea apparently deciding to just roll with the crazy shit he’s found himself in. Toni puts her hands on her hips, and gestures at Sweet Pea.

“He’ll be the Black Hood, ‘cause he’s a bigger build to me, closer to what you’ll actually be dealing with. How does he usually attack you?”

Cheryl licks her lips. “With a knife. Usually by surprise. Um. He grabs me, and I can’t always escape. Also he’s choked me, a few times.”

Toni rubs her arm. “Okay. We’ll teach you how to break somebody’s hold on you, how to get out of being strangled and maybe a couple ways to use your agility to overpower him, since you can’t use strength. Sound good?”

Cheryl nods. Sweet Pea and Toni demonstrate the moves first, and then Toni and Cheryl switch out so she has a chance to implement what she’s learning. It’s slow going, but the more they practice the better Cheryl gets, until she can recognise a couple of key moves and how to avoid them. She’s good at it. It’s like dancing, kind of, if dancing involved getting repeatedly hit and thrown around. But it gets easier for her to respond to certain movements, until it’s almost — she wouldn’t say it’s _instinctual_, exactly, but more that she can process it without rational thought. And she’s always been good with her body.

“Okay,” says Cheryl, panting. She pushes her hair back from her face, bouncing on her toes, blood pumping. “Let’s go again, properly.”

Sweet Pea hitches an eyebrow, sceptical. There’s a sweat breaking out on his brow. “We should take a break. Your muscles are gonna kill you tomorrow if we keep this up.”

Cheryl grins at him, feeling _alive_ for the first time in a week. “Oh, there’s no tomorrow. Come on. Come at me like you mean it.”

Sweet Pea glances at Toni, who nods, and he shrugs. “Alright.”

He advances towards her with the ruler they’re using as a stand-in for the knife, then lunges. Cheryl sees it coming, and darts to the side, hitting his inner elbow to make him drop it. Sweet Pea grabs her arm, hard, and she brings her hand around clockwise, pushing at his wrist until he drops his hold. She’s not quick enough to get away, though, because he grabs her with his other arm. She tries the move again, but she’s not as good at it with her left hand and it doesn’t work. Instead, she rams her elbow into his side and steps on his foot, using the distraction to slip from his hold. Sweet Pea swears.

“Fuck,” he says, clutching his side. “Yeah, alright. You still wanna try the strangling?”

Cheryl nods, out of breath. He puts his hands carefully on her neck.

“You sure? I’m not into this breath-play shit.”

Cheryl rolls her eyes, and Toni says: “She has to know, Pea.”

Sweet Pea’s hands tighten, squeezing her throat, more forceful than he has when they’ve practiced it so far. It’s not exactly _hard_, not as hard as it’s been when she’s actually getting murdered, but it’s still a significant pressure. Cheryl grabs his wrists, pushes down and away with a burst of force, and his grip breaks.

“Nicely done,” he says, grudging. “Don’t be afraid to go for the balls then, too. Fight dirty.”

Cheryl beams. Toni comes over and claps her shoulder, squeezing gently.

“Good job,” she says, sounding proud. “You’re a quick learner.”

“Thanks,” puffs Cheryl. “You wanna go a round?”

Her muscles are still all keyed up, and the exertion has made a blissful buzzing in her brain that’s keeping her from thinking (or feeling) too much. She wonders if Toni can read this in her expression, if that why she nods and drops her hand.

“If you think you can handle me,” she teases, and Sweet Pea rolls his eyes.

“I’m gonna take off,” he says, shucking on his Serpent jacket, “If this turns out to have been some weird foreplay thing, I swear to fucking god…”

Cheryl blushes all over, even down to her hands, and Toni makes an indignant noise, half shoving him out the door.

“Shut the _fuck_ up,” she’s growling, pushing at his shoulders, “you’re not fucking funny!”

“See you, Cheryl!” he yells over his shoulder, and Cheryl manages to get her brain back into gear just in time to wave at the closing door. No matter.

Toni’s pink in the face when she turns back around. “Um. Sorry. Do you still want to…?”

Cheryl nods. “Not properly, though.”

“Okay,” says Toni, adjusting the straps of her tank top. She bends her knees a little, hands coming up into loose fists, and grins up at Cheryl. “You wanna try tackling me, bombshell?”

“That’s an offensive move,” Cheryl says, and Toni’s smile widens.

“Well, you are rude.”

“Fuck you,” says Cheryl, and loosens her muscles the way they told her to. “_You_ come at _me_, if you’re not scared.”

“Alright,” says Toni, and swings at her. Cheryl grabs her arm before it can connect with her body, holding it in the air. It isn’t a real fight, really, it’s slow and calculated and they take a beat after each move to make sure the other (Cheryl, really, since she only started learning this shit three hours ago) knows what’s happening and can plan. But still, it makes Cheryl’s chest feel tight and the air sizzle around her, because it feels a bit like learning Toni’s body.

Toni twists around her to be behind Cheryl, both her arms sliding up under Cheryl’s and putting her in a hold. She huffs out a little breath that tickles the back of Cheryl’s neck.

“Anytime you wanna say ‘uncle’,” she says, right by Cheryl’s ear, and Cheryl’s knees go weak. She plays it off with a scoff, leaning back against Toni.

“Can we pretend I somehow tossed you over my head and you ended up on the ground?” she tries, and Toni laughs.

“Nope!”

Cheryl frowns, thinking, and then bends her leg so her heel is pressed against Toni’s knee. “What if I push down on your kneecap?” she asks, and feels Toni nod.

“Yeah, that’d work. Don’t, though.”

“Oh, _now_ you’ll pretend,” snarks Cheryl as Toni releases her arms, fake staggering back. Cheryl turns around so they’re face to face, and pushes Toni backwards and down onto the couch, grabbing both her wrists and holding them above Toni’s head. She has to straddle Toni’s legs to do so, pinning her against the couch.

“Uncle?” she asks, delighted when Toni grins back. Toni shakes her head. She wraps one arm around Cheryl’s waist — and _wow, okay_, they are _close_, aren’t they? — and _somehow_ (Cheryl doesn’t know how, she thinks she blacks out) Toni rolls them off the couch and onto the floor, ending up with her back on the ground and Cheryl hovering over her, Toni’s hands hot and heavy on her waist.

_Holy shit_, thinks Cheryl, panting. Toni’s pupils are blown wide, and she’s just staring back up at her, this vague look of surprise on her face. Cheryl pushes herself onto her elbows. Toni is underneath her, body heaving with each breath, and it feels — really good. Toni wriggles underneath her, and her thigh slips almost accidentally between Cheryl’s. Cheryl thinks she might pass out.

They stay there for a long, _long_ moment. The trailer is silent. Cheryl licks her lips, thinking: _Kiss me. Kiss me, kiss me, I don’t know if I can—_

“Uncle,” whispers Toni. She closes her eyes, breaking their staring contest, and Cheryl blinks too, off-guard.

“Oh,” she says, voice sounding too wrecked for no good reason. “Fuck. Okay."

She pushes herself to her feet ungracefully, feeling winded, and reaches down to help Toni stand.

“Blossoms always win,” she says weakly, as Toni avoids her eyes. Cheryl shifts on her feet.

“I’m starving,” announces Toni suddenly, too loudly, and when she finally meets Cheryl’s eyes, whatever weird look was just on her face has vanished. “You want something? I'll cook. That’s hungry work you’ve been doing.”

“Alright,” Cheryl says, softly, and follows her into the kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me to me: i just think its unfair that men have a monopoly on homoerotic fist fighting
> 
> personally i just think we needed a pick me up from the last chapter........ yes veronica is dead but we all know it will work out so why shouldnt we have some horny choni while we wait?


	11. friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometimes i do fifty words a day for a while and then sometimes i write a chapter in an evening! a consistent schedule? idk her!
> 
> toni really goes through it this chapter and i feel pretty awful about it. fair warning. the girl is gonna need a spa day after this is all over
> 
> tw for: discussion of homophobia, and suicide done with the aim of resetting the day (rather than an actual wish to die)

Cheryl sits up on Toni’s counter top, watching her work. She looks softened under the indoor lights, the yellow light blurring her a little. It’s still light out, but the sun’s no longer filtering through the window overlooking the kitchen space (the same window, Cheryl remembers, that Toni and her argued through on her lowest day). Everything is slightly cramped — Cheryl’s calling it the kitchen, but really its a bit of counter space, a fridge and a breakfast bar squished into a corner, and behind Cheryl’s back is the sofa and TV. She wouldn’t know how to live in such a small area, wouldn’t know how to go about herself in a space that didn’t echo and expand around her. She guesses she’ll never find out.

Toni’s making spaghetti. And a sauce. Well, she’s calling it a sauce, all Cheryl’s seen her do is dice some tomatoes and throw them in a frying pan with some basil. It’s the barest impression of a sauce. Not that it matters, really. It’s just nice of her to make it for them.

“You really never learned to cook?” asks Toni, licking salt off her fingers where she’d sprinkled it into her boiling pot. She’s bopping up and down a bit to the _Spotify_ mix she set up, a little twist to her hips.

“Nope,” says Cheryl, swinging her legs. She sits just to the left of the stovetop, nearest the sauce. “Never had to.”

“Your parents cooked?”

“No, we—“ Cheryl hesitates, wondering if it’s in bad taste, “—we had professionals.”

Toni glances at her, raises both her eyebrows. She seems to like teasing Cheryl, and Cheryl hasn't decided yet if she's a fan. “_Fancy_.”

Cheryl sours. “Yeah, well.”

Toni knocks Cheryl’s knee with her wooden spoon, then twirls it skilfully in her fingers to offer her the handle, like drummers sometimes do with their drumsticks. “Better get learning, then. Poke the sauce every once in a while for me, would you?”

Cheryl looks down at the spoon. “Okay,” she says, doubtfully. Toni laughs.

“It’s a _spoon_, babe. You’ll manage.”

Cheryl blushes all the way to her ears, feeling hot all over. She swallows, and pushes Toni’s tomato goo (it’s _not_ a sauce) around the pan.

“Perfect,” says Toni, and crouches down to look in her cupboard. She pulls out a packet of spaghetti. “Well, I dunno if this will be up to your _professional_ standards, but it’ll do us.”

She puts the spaghetti into the now boiling pot, pokes at it with her tongs, and then replaces the lid. “Well, that’s that. Do you think we need more sauce?”

Cheryl shrugs.

“I think we do.” She pulls another tomato from her fruit bowl, and starts dicing it on her chopping board, moving around Cheryl to be on her right side. Cheryl watches her hands, the smooth slide of the knife. She’s going to wake up tomorrow and this will all be _gone_. Of course — _of course_ — she has to go, she can’t stay in this day, just the thought of it makes her feel sick, but she’ll be saddened, too, to leave this version of Toni. To wake up to someone with Toni’s face, but who doesn’t care about her beyond a vague, abstract sort of care born out of a drunken night. A Toni who probably won’t end up teasing her about her lack of skills in the kitchen.

Cheryl runs her tongue over her teeth, and slides off the bench, her bare toes connecting with the floor. Toni glances at her.

“Hey,” she says, and Cheryl leans in to kiss her lips.

It’s only the briefest of contact, just the slightest press of Toni’s mouth under hers before Toni pulls away, gaze questioning.

“What was that for?” she asks, soft.

“I...” says Cheryl. “You were being nice.”

Toni gives her a sad smile. “I don’t think that’s really what you want right now,” she says. Cheryl doesn’t really know how to handle that, so she steps out of Toni’s space, pushing herself back up onto the counter. Toni continues as if nothing’s happened. She finishes her sauce, Cheryl still stirring it every so often to keep it from burning, and then stands with her back to the window, leaning against the sink. Cheryl pushes the sauce around the pan.

“Do you not like me?” she says eventually, and it comes out kind of bitter. “Because I thought, you know…”

“I do,” says Toni immediately. Cheryl glances up, at Toni’s face. Her lips are pressed together and her brow is furrowed, like she’s thinking over her words before she says them. Cheryl wishes people would stop treating her with kid gloves. “I just think that you—_we_’ve had a really stressful, tough day. You’re not in a good headspace, and I’m not… I wouldn’t make out with you drunk and I won’t do it now, either. But I do like you.”

Her face softens into something teasing. “Even though you’re kind of a jerk.”

Cheryl swallows. “Oh.”

She feels her face grow hot, her eyes prickle, and Toni swears.

“Shit, did I say it wrong? Cheryl, I’m sorry, I just meant, you know, that this situation’s crazy, and I don’t think…”

“It’s not that,” says Cheryl, and blinks the tears away. She looks up at the ceiling, and groans. “Sorry. God. Fuck. I just— I thought I’d done it. I thought you and I had... you know. And I thought I’d fucking got over myself and done it and it didn’t matter that I didn’t remember it because at least I'd done it, and it was okay, and now it’s like… I thought I’d already been brave. And now I find out I never was.”

“Are you talking about… what are you talking about?”

Cheryl waves her hand at Toni, at her general physique. “You’re a _girl_,” she says, and Toni says: “Oh. Oh, _Cheryl—“_

Her phone’s timer goes off. Toni grimaces.

“Fuck, hang on,” she says and hits silent, then manoeuvres their food so it’s no longer sitting on the hot plates. Then she comes to stand in front of Cheryl, resting her hands on Cheryl’s knees. For someone who pulled away from Cheryl’s kiss, she sends a lot of freaking mixed signals.

“Cheryl,” she says, looking up at her. “That’s _okay_. It’s okay to feel like that. But you are brave, okay?”

Cheryl scoffs, and Toni squeezes her knees. “No, you are. You think just anyone could survive repeating the same day over, getting murdered for a week straight? And it’s not even just that— I know who you are, Cheryl. It takes bravery to go through as many losses as you have. And what you said last night about your _mom_—“

Toni cuts herself off. “Well. I think you’re brave, anyway. And maybe when it’s— when everything is less _this_, then maybe you and I can, you know. Be brave together, or something.”

Cheryl surges forward with a rush of feeling and, for the second time, plants her lips on Toni’s. Toni makes a noise, a startled little sound in the back of her throat, but Cheryl cups her face between her hands and keeps kissing her, blood boiling under her skin. Toni’s fingers clench around her knees, and then her hands slide up, up, up to Cheryl’s waist, hot and heavy and sure, and she tugs Cheryl towards her. Cheryl parts her legs, lets Toni step between them, and she kisses and kisses and kisses Toni so hard that her lips start to feel red and raw. Toni pulls her even closer, so close Cheryl nearly slips from the counter, only held up by Toni’s body against hers, and it is _against_ her, and holy fuck, kissing boys has never felt like this. She slips downwards, toes grazing the ground as Toni bends her backwards over the counter like she can’t get close enough, and holy _shit—_

Toni pulls away, panting, and their mouths actually make a _sound_ at the disconnect, what the _fuck_, how is that as hot as it is. “I didn’t,” she says, her chest heaving and drawing Cheryl’s eyes before she immediately looks away, feeling guilty, “mean right this _second_, _Jesus Christ._”

Cheryl slides her hands off Toni’s cheeks and down her neck. Toni shivers. “Fuck. Jesus, Cheryl.”

“Sorry,” she mumbles, and Toni shakes her head.

“Are you okay?”

Cheryl nods. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” says Toni. “Good. Let’s, um. Let’s eat.”

They dish out their pasta, zapping each in the microwave for thirty seconds, and then sit down at the rickety little table that masquerades as a dining table. The chairs are plastic and kind of seem like they might have been nicked from Southside High. Cheryl avoids looking at Toni, because her lips are pink and swollen and looking at her feels a bit like looking at the sun.

Toni eats six mouthfuls of pasta, which Cheryl knows because she’s staring resolutely at the food. Then Toni says: “My uncle hates the fact that I’m bi.”

Cheryl looks up, startled. “Oh.”

It’s Toni’s turn to look at the food. “Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s not so much the bisexual part, you know. ‘Cause I can still date a man. It’s the liking girls part that he can’t stand.”

Cheryl doesn’t know what to say to that, so she doesn’t say anything. Her ears are buzzing, but eventually it becomes clear that Toni’s waiting for her, so she says:

“I can’t stand that I like girls, either.”

“Yeah,” says Toni, and scrubs at her eyes. “It’s hard to make that go away.”

“Do you know Betty and Veronica?”

Of course Toni does, they were only _beaten and killed this fucking morning. _Cheryl means does she know them from before, though. Before this morning’s shit show, when B&V were bouncing and bright and bubbly and too fucking happy for their own good.

“Yeah,” says Toni, “They were dating, right?”

Cheryl nods, throat thick. “I was so— I _am_ so jealous, you know? They just get to fucking do whatever they like, and they’re happy, and they’re living in this perfect fucking fantasy world where they can hold hands and do cutesy nicknames and they don’t have a fucking _clue_, they think it’s all rainbows and fun parades and they never even asked — Veronica _knew_, _knows_, I’m sure she does, and she never even fucking asked, never wondered why I might not be okay with it, never made the fucking _effort_—“

Cheryl’s voice breaks, tears rolling down her cheeks and landing on her plate, fucking gross, and she swipes at the skin under her eyes. “And I used to think, _fuck_, I used to think, you know, that they should fucking wake up and smell the roses, it’s not all fine and dandy and someone is gonna hate them for it, someone is gonna kill them for it, and now they fucking know because someone _did!_ And now Veronica’s dead ‘cause she was too fucking stupid to realise the reality of the situation! I mean, what the _fuck?"_

Cheryl breaks off with a gasp, too many emotions bubbling under her surface. Kissing Toni, it's like... everything she thinks about girls, about being a fucking lesbian, it's all now only a hair's breadth from reach, her meticulous seal on it broken, and she feels scraped back and raw and like maybe she should have gone to therapy way back when Veronica suggested it, actually, and like maybe it wasn't such a stupid idea.

“Yeah,” says Toni, and she’s crying too. “Yeah, Cheryl. I know. But at least she was fucking loved, right?”

Cheryl covers her face in her hands, shaking. She’s gotta get out of this fucking day. She’s gotta get out before she goes fucking crazy, because she just wants to see Veronica and hug her and bury her face in her neck, and she wants Veronica to stroke her hair and she wants to hear her laugh and she wants to watch her and Betty and think: maybe someday. And she wants them to love each other and maybe, above all else, she wants it to be enough.

“I think I wanna wake up,” says Cheryl thickly, choking on the words. “I’m sorry, Toni, I wanna wake up, I want this to be over—“

“Please don’t tell me,” says Toni, whatever the fuck that means, and Cheryl shakes her head. She sniffs, tries to draw the air deep into her lungs and stop _fucking crying_, it isn’t productive, and then blows it all out in one hit.

“I’ve got to kill myself” says Cheryl, “Because I killed her. Do you see? I didn’t call her, and so they went to Betty’s house, and Mr Cooper found out and he killed her. It’s my fault. And so I have to wake up.”

She nods her head, then takes another bite of her food. Might as well die on a full stomach. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I want — I think I want to do pills, I know that’s… admittedly all my knowledge of this is coming from TV, but that seems alright. Peaceful. And you’ll — you’ll stay with me. So it will be okay.”

Cheryl looks up at Toni to gauge her thoughts, only Toni’s face is unreadable. Her shoulders are set in a stony line.

“You knew this would happen,” says Cheryl, gently, because she can see how this might be a big deal, for Toni. “You’ve known all day, Toni.”

“Maybe I didn’t believe you,” says Toni lowly. “Or didn’t want to, I don’t know. But I can’t— I’m not letting you do that, Cheryl.”

“You’ve _got_ to.”

“No!” snaps Toni. She slams her fist on the table, and their plates rattle. Cheryl gathers them all up, stands and deposits them over in the sink. They’re still half full, but she doesn’t think they’ll be finishing. Toni keeps talking. “What if you don’t wake up tomorrow, huh? And I’ve just gotta go the rest of my life knowing I could’ve stopped you from dying? Or, or — the rest of today! You say the day resets when you die, but what if that’s only your experience? What if I have to live three, six, twelve hours with you dead and not knowing if it worked? And if I help you, that’s — that’s accessory to something, I’m fucking sure of it! You can’t ask me to do this.”

Cheryl swallows, clenches her fists by her sides.

“Fine,” she spits back. “Fine, fuck off then! I thought it’d be nice to die not by myself for once, but whatever! You do you, Toni, just go off and forget that I’ll be over here dying in my sleep, I guess.”

Toni rolls her eyes. “Well, obviously I’m not fucking doing _that_,” she says, also getting up. They end up on opposite sides of the breakfast bar, facing one another off, and Cheryl is so _tired_ of having this fight, rather than just fucking getting on with it.

“I’ll come back,” starts Cheryl, but Toni’s running her hands over her own mouth, movements erratic and desperate.

“What if you don’t?” she cries, throwing her hands in the air. She starts to pace backwards and forwards. “What if—what if this is, like, fucking parallel universes or some shit? What if when you die you just get carted over into the next one? What if you _leave_ me here? You’ve got no fucking clue how this works, and you’ve had—! You’ve had weeks to get acquainted with this batshit mess, I only found out about it today! And Cheryl, you can’t— you can’t— you _kissed_ me,“ she finally settles on, voice cracking. “You can’t kiss someone and then ask them to stand by while you kill yourself, what the _fuck?_”

Cheryl looks at her for a moment — eyes wild, stance aggressive, lips stained red from the tomato sauce. And then she bolts for the bedroom. Toni swears, loudly, and Cheryl trips over Toni’s clothes as she scrambles to get inside the bathroom, which connects to Toni’s room. She slams the door shut behind her, hands immediately going for the medicine cabinet and finding purchase on a little orange bottle, although who the hell knows whats in it. Toni forces herself into the bathroom, actually smacks the bottle of pills from Cheryl’s hand, and then grabs her wrist, holding it in the air between them.

“Why the fuck isn’t there a lock on your door?” Cheryl asks. Toni’s breathing heavily, her grip iron tight around Cheryl’s wrist, hard enough to bruise. It's a little too familiar, but it doesn't set Cheryl's nerves in quite the same way. She wonders if this is what it means to trust someone.

“It’s on the other side,” she pants. “Sweet Pea’s an idiot who screwed the doorknobs on the wrong way round. Couldn’t ever be bothered to fix it.”

“Oh,” says Cheryl, brain whirring. She goes slack in Toni’s hold. “Fucking Sweet Pea.”

“Yeah,” says Toni, and cautiously lessens the amount of pressure she’s using. “Are we good?”

Cheryl nods. Toni looks at her long and hard, then nods to herself. “Okay,” she says, and then bends down slowly to retrieve the pills, eyes on Cheryl. Cheryl stays still, and then eventually Toni’s gaze breaks, and she throws herself out of the bathroom, lucky in that it’s so tiny. Toni yells, but Cheryl’s already closing the door and flicking the lock.

“_Fuck!” _yells Toni, slamming her fist level with Cheryl’s head. “Fuck, Cheryl!”

“I’m really sorry!” says Cheryl, palm pressed against the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Don’t worry about!”

“You don’t have to do this!” Toni pounds on the door, but it’s useless. Cheryl _does _have to do this. Veronica’s life depends on it. “Cheryl! Cheryl!”

Cheryl casts her eyes around Toni’s room, looking for something useful. She could always go home, down her own bottle of sleeping pills. She spots her keys on Toni’s bedside table and makes to run for it, then remembers her car’s still at home, and therefore absolutely no help. _Shit. _She hesitates, Toni’s shaking of the door handle loud in her ears, and spots the keys to Toni’s motorcycle. Fuck it. She did _say_ it was a death trap. She stops by the bathroom door again, biting her lip.

“Toni?”

“Cheryl!”

“I’m just — I’m really sorry in advance about your bike!”

Toni’s silent for a second, then she slams her body into the door with a huge thud, and Cheryl jerks away. She yells Cheryl’s name again, twice, and Cheryl feels bad, she _does_, but she’s not letting this be the day she gets out of. She just _can’t_. She wants it over, she wants it to end, but she’s not trading Veronica’s life like this.

“I’m sorry!” she says again, swiping non-existent tears from her cheeks (she thinks, privately, that it’ll be a miracle if she ever cries again), and bolts from the trailer. It’s only dusk, but it takes Cheryl a moment to get the keys into the ignition of the bike since her hands are shaking. It’s a battered thing, and it feels like so long ago that her and Toni were on it driving for breakfast. Lifetimes ago. Maybe for Cheryl it is. The engine revs to life, and she awkwardly gets onto it, wincing as she tries to kick up the stand. It doesn’t work, and she has to get off the bike to do it since she’s fucking incapable, having to hold it with one hand to keep it from tipping over. She hopes no one’s seeing this.

Once she’s actually on it it’s a hell of a wobbly ride, but she doesn’t need to go far. She just wants to make it to the highway, a nice long, straight stretch where she can speed up fast enough to make it a clean crash. Well, cleaner than going smack into a tree at only thirty miles an hour. God, this one is gonna fucking hurt. Veronica better be _fucking_ appreciative. Cheryl speeds up as she hits Main St, ‘cause now it’s only a matter of time. 70 odd mph, no helmet, a sudden stop? Yeah, she’s a goner. She spares another thought to apologise again to Toni, and almost closes her eyes. She’s not sure she wants to see it when she drives straight into the headlights of this oncoming truck, which yeah, she also feels kind of guilty about, but its not like the driver’ll remember. Hopefully. It’s _not_ a parallel universe sitch, right?

Cheryl screws up her nerve, is about to swerve into the lane when she hits — she hits a fucking _pot hole_, of all things (her parents taxes hard at work, obviously), and the bike jumps, and she just flies straight over the fucking handlebars. She _soars_. The evening sunset stretches out above, beautiful watercolours painted across the sky, and Cheryl adds her own splash of red to the mix. That familiar black is creeping into her eyes, her bones hurt like glow sticks, like they’ve all been snapped and are seeping out toxic glow-in-the-dark liquid, and Veronica puts both her hands on Cheryl’s face, hands cold but soft like always.

_Hey, baby girl, _she says, and Cheryl smiles a deliriously grotesque smile, blood on her lips and on her teeth. She thinks she might be missing a few. _Rough night?_

_I’ve missed you, _thinks Cheryl, and she thinks, _I want to wake up_, and she thinks _I’m getting out of this day if it kills me_, and Jason says, _you never know, Cheryl, but maybe it just might_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy holidays! i hope yours was better than toni’s
> 
> i really hope you enjoyed this chapter!! this day has stretched on for so long, or so it feels to me, and im really excited to get back into the swing of things for a bit, although i think the end is in sight.... i also wish you all a wonderful holiday season filled with lots of good cheer!!! <3


	12. friday

Cheryl keeps her eyes closed for a long moment, just breathing in and out through her nose, body still. She’s alive. _Thank fuck_. She hadn’t realised how nervous she was that her hare-brained plan would fall through, that Toni was right and she really _didn’t_ understand the rules of the time-loop she’s found herself stuck in. Possibly she’d been deliberately avoiding thinking about it, to keep her from losing her nerve and to make sure she actually followed through — it was scary, sure, but she knew, she _knew_, in her gut that she was right. And it worked. She made it. And if she made it, then so did Veronica.

Cheryl bites on her tongue, focusing on the sting of her teeth on muscle, like if she clamps down hard enough it’ll swallow the anxiety forcing it’s way up her throat. It’s alright. It’s _alright_. She feels something move in front of her face and opens her eyes a smidge, looking out blearily through her lashes. Toni’s hand is hovering in front of her mouth.

“Are you checking if I’m fucking breathing,” Cheryl mumbles, and Toni’s hand jerks away.

“No,” she says, defensively, and Cheryl opens her eyes to see Toni standing above her, glass of water in hand. No pills. Cheryl guesses that’s fair. She feels a sudden, extreme rush of guilt for what she did to her yesterday, a sick feeling in her intestines that has her lurching forwards, stumbling for the bathroom. She dry heaves into the toilet several times, spots in her vision, as Toni rubs her back.

“Sorry,” says Cheryl, sitting back against the tiles. Toni’s squatting opposite her, and she leans forward to tuck a bit of hair behind Cheryl’s ear, nails scraping gently against her skin. Cheryl sizzles at the touch.

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” she says, and Cheryl feels worse. “I was worried. I mean, you drank a _lot_ last night. _A lot,_ a lot.”

Back in Toni’s bedroom, Cheryl’s phone finally goes off, the shrill alarm tone that she is absolutely fucking _sick_ of hearing. Toni winces. “Jesus, that’s an ear splitter. You think you’re okay?”

Cheryl nods, and Toni pushes herself to her feet, disappearing back into her bedroom. A minute later the alarm cuts off. Cheryl stands also, and, one hand braced on the wall for support, makes her way back in too. Her body aches and her lungs hurt, and she still feels like she needs to be sick, even though all the dry-heaving brought up was the acidic taste of blood. Toni looks over at her.

“You’re all green looking, are you _sure_ you’re okay?”

Cheryl nods even though her eyes are currently closed in a grimace. “Peachy keen.”

“Here,” Toni hands her the water. “You better drink this.”

Cheryl does, leaning against Toni’s desk. It’s only four past seven, she has at least five minutes before she usually calls Veronica, but Cheryl’s got ants under her skin, running up and down her arms and making her break out in goosebumps. She steps into her skirt and, face screwed up in concentration, manages to hike it up her legs without passing out. She’ll definitely cross motor-cycle accidents off her list of ways to die, Jesus _Christ_. The regret is immense.

“Alright?” says Toni, far away. Cheryl shakes her head.

“No. Are you?”

“Yeah— no. No, I… I guess not,” answers Toni, sounding kind of baffled at her own answer. She frowns down at herself. “I feel weird.”

“I’m gonna make this up to you,” promises Cheryl, and Toni throws a wistful smile at her, turning to her desk to shuffle some things around.

“You do keep saying that,” she says, absently.

Cheryl stops fiddling with the buttons of her skirt, the black denim nearly slipping from round her waist. “What?”

“What?”

“What did you just say?”

Toni frowns at her, like Cheryl’s making a big deal out of nothing. “I dunno? Nothing, really.”

Cheryl swallows and forces her hands to move again, buttoning her skirt all the way up so it sits snugly on her body. At least she can be pretty sure that she’s right — every loop seems to settle itself over the last one, not create a whole other universe, which is good. She doesn’t want Toni — or Betty, or Archie — living with the memories Cheryl had given them. She drops Toni’s purple t-shirt down over her skirt, not bothering to tuck it in, and pushes her hair back over her shoulders. “Listen, Toni, I’m sorry, but I kind of have to go.”

She hesitates, shifting on her feet, and then reaches up to cup Toni’s jaw, her touch lingering. “But thank you for taking care of me. You’ve been— so selfless, and really, I… I don’t deserve it. So I’m going to pay it forward, I promise. And I really hope that I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She swipes her thumb across Toni’s cheek one last time, then leans down, hooks her fingers in the backs of her heels and leaves. Her palm is sweating around her phone, the knowledge that she has to make the call — and that if it doesn’t work, if it’s not just _feelings_ that carry over, but actual, physical acts — weighing down on her chest like bricks. She nearly walks right into Sweet Pea as she leaves Toni’s street, but brushes him off by avoiding his eyes. Then she feels bad about that, and turns around to call out:

“Sweet Pea!”

He twists. He looks cold in the pale morning light, Serpent jacket stark against his skin.

“Thank you. For yesterday.”

Sweet Pea squints at her, eyebrows drawn in tight. “Do I know you?”

“No,” says Cheryl, and does a weird kind of curtsey since her hands are full and she can’t wave, “But thanks anyway.”

She turns back to the road, walks the rest of the way to the corner and drops her shoes near a telegraph pole, reaching out with one hand to steady herself against it, the other on her abdomen. She wonders if her stomach is still splattered across Main St, if that’s why it feels like her hand could pass right through. She abandons that thought to pull out her phone, finding Veronica’s contact info with shaky fingers. She taps the little green button, holds it to her ear, and listens to it _ring, ring, ring…_

_“_Baby girl!” coos Veronica, and Cheryl breathes in sharply. “How was your night?”

Veronica waits. Then: “Cheryl?”

“I’m here,” Cheryl breathes, and leans her forehead against the pole. Tears of relief rise up behind her eyelids. “God, Ronnie, I’m here.”

Veronica giggles. “Okay? I thought you’d still be in bed sleeping off those shots, at this hour. What’s up?”

“I…” Cheryl presses her lips together, opening her eyes. “Actually, Ronnie, I need a favour. Can I talk to Betty?”

“Sure,” says Veronica, and there’s some static as she hands over the phone. She hears Betty say _Me? _in an incredulous voice, and smiles to herself about it.

“…Hello?” comes Betty’s voice, slightly suspicious. Cheryl feels herself break into a big, goofy grin.

“Cousin,” she says, but it doesn’t even sound derogatory. Actually, it sounds like Cheryl’s _glad_ to hear from her, the smile on her face infecting her voice, but Cheryl thinks she can forgive herself just this once. “I was wondering, would you — would you come and pick me up? Please? I’m in the Southside, and if I stay here any longer I’ll get mugged, you’ve seen me.”

Cheryl feels Betty roll her eyes, but it doesn’t damper her mood. Her cousin lets out a big, long sigh. “Fine. Share your location, we’ll come get you.”

“Thank you, Betty,” says Cheryl, and in the stunned silence that follows: “This might sound weird, but don’t go home, okay? Just come straight here. You understand? Don’t go home.”

“Uh… okay? _Why?_”

Cheryl sinks down to the pavement, leaning back against the telephone pole. “Just a feeling.”

“Okay…” says Betty, sounding weirded-out. “See you in a bit, yeah?”

“See you,” says Cheryl.

***

Fifteen minutes later, and a car that is definitely _not_ Veronica’s pulls up, a tiny, shitty Volvo that Cheryl’s never been happier to see in her life. She leaps to her feet, holding her breath, and only releases it when she sees Veronica’s hand, pearl bracelet shining in the sun, hanging out the passenger window.

“Thank god,” whispers Cheryl, as Betty pulls up. And then just stands there for a few moments, stunned. Betty rolls down her window.

“Are you getting in?” she demands, incredulously, and Cheryl gulps around the lump in her throat.

“Yeah,” she says. “But, um. Could you both jump out, for a second?”

Betty looks at her, eyes narrowed and ears pricked like she’s expecting the other shoe to drop. “Why?”

“Could you just do it?”

Betty hesitates, but she turns the ignition off and steps out onto the street, a _what now?_ look on her features. Cheryl has missed her so much. She bites on her lip.

“Can I have a hug?”

Both Betty’s eyebrows shoot upwards. “Excuse me?”

She looks at Cheryl, eyes raking over her face, and the crease in between her eyebrows gets slightly more pronounced. “I— yeah, okay. I guess you can?”

Cheryl nods. They do a bit of a jittery dance, half-steps towards each other and adjusting their arms to accomodate the others, but then Cheryl wraps her arms around her and Betty does the same. It is, Cheryl will admit, kind of uncomfortable. Betty’s arms are too stiff, and it’s not like Cheryl has _practice_, and she pulls away after four seconds when it becomes awkward, aware that her cheeks must be red. Betty’s eyes are concerned.

“Are you alright, Cheryl?” she asks, seriously.

“Yeah,” says Cheryl, mouth twisting. “Yeah, just—“

She reaches up, grabs Betty’s face between her hands, and pulls it down to kiss her forehead. She thinks of Mr Andrews as she does it, lying pale-faced in his hospital bed, the words she’d said to Archie when he caught her. The kiss of life. It’s pretty ridiculous, she knows that, and it’s exactly the kind of old wives belief Nana Rose subscribes too, but Cheryl does it anyway.She’s not saying it _worked_ on Mr Andrews, but, well, he’s still around, isn’t he? And this is Cheryl’s living nightmare, so who’s to say she can’t make the rules? She leaves a bright red mark on Betty's forehead.

_(she's not wearing lipstick)_

“Cheryl?” asks Veronica, having finally got out of the car. She’s a little wobbly on her feet, face tired but smile soft. “What are you doing, babe?”

Cheryl shrugs. “Stealing your girl, I don’t know. Come here.”

Veronica steps forward, tilting her face up expectantly and sliding her eyes closes, a pleased little smile on her face. Cheryl kisses her forehead, too, and then tugs her into a hug. This one is better than Betty’s, because hugging Veronica doesn’t feel so new, and also because Veronica is shorter than her and slots into her embrace. Ronnie runs her hands up Cheryl’s back.

“Alcohol makes you cuddly, huh?” she says, laughing, into Cheryl’s shoulder. “Betty, get in here.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” says Betty, and then Veronica and Cheryl reach out in unison to tug her into the hug. It makes Cheryl feel warm and golden from the inside out, and she thinks how crazy it is, really, that she’s hugging Betty and Veronica on the corner of a street in the _Southside_, and less than an hour ago she was roadkill, and that if she has any say in it at all, then tomorrow is going to be fucking _Saturday_.

***

“Wait,” says Cheryl as they drive to her house, reaching out to touch Betty’s shoulder. Her eyes are glued to road — not the houses, not the car in front, but the view of Main St behind her, the tarmac stretching out in the rear-view mirror. “Wait, Betty, can you stop here?”

Betty pulls over, blue eyes glancing up into the mirror and meeting Cheryl’s for a fraction of a second. “Here?” she says, word barely out of her mouth before Cheryl is getting out, door slamming behind her, and jogging back to where they’ve just passed. There, in the middle of the road. Cheryl feels sick.

“Oh my god,” she whispers, and blinks down at it. She wonders, if she reached down, if it would still be wet. As if reading her thoughts, a drop of blood runs down the road’s incline, slight though it is, and Cheryl watches, in grotesque fascination, as it slinks down to her bare toes. It starts to rain.

“Cheryl,” calls Betty, and when Cheryl turns around Betty is standing half out of the car, one hand shielding her eyes from the weather. “What the hell are you doing?”

_Can’t you see it?_ Cheryl wants to say, but doesn’t. The blood — _her blood_ — starts to wriggle as it merges with the water, more sliding down towards her feet, staining her skin red. It collects between her toes — god, it’s still _warm_ — blending with her nail polish and swirling around like water in a drain.

“_Cheryl_,” yells Betty again, and Cheryl glances up. There’s a car in front of her, honking it horn, and Cheryl blinks the rain off her eyelashes, shaking her head. She walks back to the car, hair and t-shirt soaked.

“What the _fuck_ is up with you?” asks Betty as she gets back. Cheryl waves her hand at her dismissively, and slides into the backseat. Veronica twists to look at her.

“Seriously, Cheryl, you’re being… different,” she says. “Are you— did you have a dream? Is it Jason?”

“No,” says Cheryl, and leans her head back, closing her eyes so she doesn’t have to look at her feet. “I think Reggie slipped me some Jingle Jangle at your party.”

“That _fucker_,” explodes Veronica, and enters into a rant that lasts all the drive to Cheryl house.

***

“Is that my _shirt?_” asks Toni when Cheryl slides into her seat during English, out of the corner of her mouth. She’s openly gaping at Cheryl, like most people have been all day. Well, Cheryl _says_ most people. What she _means_ is people with _taste_ (and by that she _actually_ means, people who respect her mean girl persona and can still be intimidated by her. So, cliques of freshmen. And Kevin). That’s what happens, she supposes, when you cultivate a brand and then suddenly break it. She’s like Reputation-era Taylor Swift.

“Yep,” chirps Cheryl, settling into her seat. She crosses her legs at the knee, and picks a bit of dust off her black jeans. There isn’t a spot of red on her, not even on her lips. It feels weirdly freeing.

Toni’s mouth twists on her face. “Looks good on you,” she says neutrally, typing away on her laptop, and Cheryl grins.

“Thank you,” she says, facing ahead. In her peripheral she sees Toni reach into her bag, looking down at whatever she pulls out thoughtfully for a few seconds, running her fingers over it.

“Maybe I should keep this, then,” she teases, and when Cheryl looks over she’s got Cheryl’s brooch in her hands. “Since we’re stealing possessions, and all.”

“If you want,” says Cheryl, with a smile. “Yeah, actually. Give it here a moment?”

Toni hands it over. Cheryl runs her fingertips over the gold, stroking down the legs, the ruby in place of the spider’s thorax. Then she leans across and into Toni’s space, pins it on the lapel of her shirt.

“There,” she says, soft. A kiss of life, and a protector. They hold eye contact for a short, charged moment, Toni’s eyes dipping down to her lips.

“Thank you,” Toni says, like she understands.

***

At ten to seven that evening, Cheryl squares her shoulders into a tight line. She’s prepared. She knows what she has to do — what she’s _going _to do. She marches to the locker rooms, pretends it’s one of fanfare rather than a funeral. The grass of the oval is wet, like usual, and blades of grass stick to her tennis shoes, muddying them up. She slips as she enters the lockers, the linoleum already wet from everyone else traipsing through. She slips off her shoes and socks.

The waiting is the worst part. Her blood thrums under her skin, veins bobbing up and down. Her hands look ghastly under the green lights, tinged sick. She rests two fingers over her pulse.

_Ba dum. Ba dum_. _Ba dum_.

“Okay,” says Cheryl, and takes air into her lungs. Her hair is tied back in a long braid. The hand on her watch ticks over to 6:53. “Showtime.”

The Black Hood slips in through the door. She’s out of sight, hidden by the lockers, and she watches him press himself against the wall as the door clangs to a close, edging towards the toilets. She shifts back, eyes focused ahead, and her bare toes connect with a carelessly left drink bottle. It clatters to the floor.

_Shit_, thinks Cheryl, as the Black Hood’s head swivels round. Their eyes meet.

“Evening,” says Cheryl, and it comes out hysterical. She laughs, a breathless sound that echoes around the lockers. “Fuck. Hi.”

_He’s a lion_, thinks Cheryl, as he advances, watching the slope of his shoulders. _I thought I was, but I’m not, I’m a gazelle. I am gazelle, a new born, and nature’s come to get me._

The knife is in his hand, and Cheryl regrets not bringing a weapon. He makes a swipe, arm cutting gracefully through the air and catching her shoulder. Cheryl lets out a noise, shifts backwards, and manages to avoid the next blow. She ducks from reach, but that’s no _good_, she has to attack, to incapacitate, it’s no good to get out alive, not anymore. She’s taking this fucker down. For Veronica.

She makes a split decision, trusting in the element of surprise, and throws her arms around his waist with as much force as she can muster, propelling them both to the ground. It works, but only barely — luck is on her side in that the floor’s still slippery, his boots slick with dew from the grass. The Black Hood twists as he goes down, and her temple whacks the corner of the bench in time with the knife falling from his hand, and stars fill her vision. It’s enough of a blow that it disorients her long enough for him to get an arm on her throat, and like that Cheryl’s upperhand’s gone.

She claps his ear, _hard_, and wriggles out from under him. But her breathing’s laboured, her head dizzy, and she barely makes it to her feet before she’s being shoved into the lockers, lifted enough that her feet lose touch with the ground. _Not again_, she thinks, _please, not again_.

She wraps her hands around his wrists, nails digging into the leather gloves, and tries to push down like she practiced with Sweet Pea. It doesn’t work.

Real panic sets in.

“I can’t,” chokes Cheryl, looking not at him but above, at the fluorescent lights, which blur and flare out through the liquid in her eyes. “I can’t, don’t make me do it, not again—“

Her vision darkens at the corners, the scene giving away into blotches of nothing, as if she’s stared too long at the sun.

_Nobody’s listening, Cheryl_, says Jason, peering interestedly at her from beside the Black Hood. Her gaze slides to the right, to the hole in his head, the pearly whites of his eyes. He reaches out and puts one icily-cold finger to the middle of her forehead. She feels it sink through her skin, poke through the folds of her brain to right behind her eyes. _Ka-put_.

“Mr Cooper—“ gasps Cheryl, with what remains of her breath, “—_Please—_“

The fingers round her throat slacken, easing only barely, but enough that the oxygen goes straight into her lungs, a blessed relief. It gives her just enough for her to have one last go at the manoeuvre, and in front of her the world bends, and she’s looking at the Black Hood and Sweet Pea all at once. _Fight dirty_, _Cheryl_, says Sweet Pea, but his mouth’s moving out of sync and it sounds like she’s underwater. _Hit me in the balls, come on!_

Cheryl drives her knee upwards, and in the next moment pulls down on the Black Hood’s wrists. His grip breaks, he stumbles, and Cheryl falls to the floor, knees buckling. She catches herself on the lockers, propping herself up as air comes flooding back. He looks up at her, crouched on the floor.

“You don’t have to do this,” she says, chest heaving. Her toes are cold, a blotchy purple, and spots still cloud her vision. Her ears still ring. “Please, Mr Cooper, you don’t, I haven’t _done_ anything—“

“You’re a sinner, Cheryl,” he says. She watches the mask move with his mouth, the distortion of fabric. “You’re _deviant_. You know this has to happen.”

“Fuck you,” says Cheryl, but then his gloved fingers are finding purchase around the discarded knife, and he’s surging forward with a last burst of energy and Cheryl’s fading fast. _You were so close!_ says Toni as she goes, wrapping her hands round Cheryl’s. _Baby girl, what happened?_ And then Archie’s there, or he isn’t, and he’s saying—

“You’re gonna be fine, Cheryl, I’ve got you, it’s okay, I’m getting help—“

and Veronica’s got her hands on Cheryl’s face, and her pearls are stained with blood, clogging around the thread like hair in a drain, and Jason strokes her hair and says:

_I’ve got you, Cheryl. You’re going to stay here with me, in the dark, where I can protect you. You left me, and now I get to keep you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh NOW we’re back in business
> 
> sorry about the wait i went on a pd course for 2 weeks and didn’t finish this chapter b4 starting it….. oops a daisy!
> 
> anyway..... anyone else tired?? im tired. cant tell if its this or the course. think its time for boss ass bitch cheryl to make her reappearance.... campiness here we come baby!! we're flipping between tones like nobodys business!


	13. friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol

Cheryl wakes up, and has a tantrum.

“Fuck!” she says, loudly, bringing her hands up to her face. She squirms into the pillow, pounding her legs against the bed, driving the heels of her palms into the space just under her eyebrows. Something wriggles up the back of her spine, coiling at the base of neck, tight and hot and _irritating_. “Fuck fuck fuck!”

“Woah, there,” says Toni, and Cheryl lets out a great huff of breath, her legs collapsing back onto the mattress. When Cheryl peeks between her fingers, Toni’s eyeing her warily but amused from the doorway, pills still absent from her hands. “You alright, sunshine?”

Cheryl lets out one last, emphatic _fuck _before allowing her hands fall back down to her sides. She sits up, knees drawn to her chest, a scratchy feeling under her skin.

“I’m fucking _useless_, Toni,” she says, tucking her chin down. She rakes her head through her hair, scratching at her scalp and half expecting flakes of blood to come away under her nails.“I’m no action heroine. I _suck_.”

Toni shifts on her feet. Like always, her hair is pushed back with a bandana, and Cheryl’s eyes catch on the lines of her neck. She has the incredibly selfish but not entirely serious thought that she should just stay here and spend the day adorning Toni’s throat with hickies. She’s a sinner anyway, what harm’s it going to do?

“You wanna glass of water?” asks Toni, and Cheryl flops back down onto the bed, annoyance flooding through her. Just once —just _once_— she wants to not have to explain herself. She wants Toni to already understand. Veronica, Betty, Kevin, she’d take any of them, if they just _remembered_. If Jughead _fucking_ Jones came up to her, she’d even take that. Jughead fucking _Jones_.

As it is, Cheryl just grabs the extra pillow, buries her face in it, and yells into it.

“Fuck!”

***

Toni kicks her out, eventually, which is fair because even Cheryl didn’t believe she’d be allowed to stay in her bed all day. For an hour, though, that’s all she does. Cheryl mopes about in bed, staring at the ceiling, while Toni showers and gets ready for school, shoving things in her backpack and just generally ignoring Cheryl’s existence, which: rude. When Veronica calls, Cheryl rakes up all her skills as an actress to be at least _mostly_ convincing, just to really sell it. It’s incredible that people said she wouldn’t make a good theatre kid. She’s gay with a fucked up mom. Of _course_ she would. Their conversation goes like this:

“Baby girl! How was your night?”

“Hi, Ronnie.” Cheryl knows she should pad it out, but she’s tired and just cuts straight to the point. “Can I speak to Betty?”

“Sure thing, chicken wing,” Veronica says, and hands her over. Cheryl heaves a huge, melodramatic sigh, making a one-armed snow angel in Toni’s duvet, rucking it up around her.

“Hi, Cousin. Look, FYI, I pinched your Biology textbook from your locker on Tuesday. Swear I’ll bring it to school today. Sorry.”

“You— _what_?” says Betty. “Cheryl, my Bio textbook is at home.”

“Nope,” says Cheryl. “I’m looking at it right now. Says Betty Cooper on the inside cover in cursive and everything. I like the Mrs Betty Lodge under it too, that’s sickeningly adorable.”

“_Cheryl_,” hisses Betty, in a way that makes her wonder if Betty really does have that written down. “Jesus, how do you even know my locker code?”

“I have my sources.” In the bathroom, the shower turns off with a squeak that echoes in the pipes by Cheryl’s head. “So I guess you’ll go straight to school, then? No homeward-bound detours?”

“No, I guess not— how the _hell_ do you know so much about my schedule?”

Cheryl hangs up on her. Problem One: sorted. She squints appraisingly at Toni’s hamper, and then tosses her phone in its direction. It arcs gracefully in the air, and for a second she actually thinks, _hey, I could be the next LeBron_, and then it lands two feet away from it instead. Cheryl glares.

“Fuck you, then,” she says, and goes back to staring at the ceiling. She sneaks a glance at Toni when she emerges from the bathroom, but she’s already dressed. She feels dirty as soon as she does it, and that just makes her even more pissed.

“Hey, sleeping beauty.” Toni leans over into her field of vision, waving. “No offence, but I want my room back. Are you getting up anytime soon? Maybe to wash the smell of Vodka off you?”

Cheryl groans. She grumbles. She gripes and grouches. Says: “You’ve done me a great grievance.”

It’s the little things.

“I’ll drive you to school,” entices Toni, dangling her motorbike keys, and Cheryl eventually heaves herself out of bed. She tugs her skirt up her legs, makes a little _ta-da_ movement with her hands.

“Ready.”

Toni looks at her. “You’re so weird. You’re really going to school like that?”

“Yeah. Oh—" Cheryl swipes her spider brooch off the desk, and tosses it to Toni, who catches it instinctively. “Pin that on ya, Topaz.”

Toni smiles down at it, _almost_ wistfully. If Cheryl tries hard enough, she can pretend that maybe a tiny part of Toni’s subconscious is recognising it for what it is.

***

Tackle, dodge the bench, twist—_shit,_ she didn’t think this through, he tosses her off him, she stumbles— grab arm, release, _fuck_, blow to the head—

_Fuck me_, thinks Cheryl, dazed. _Duck next time, you stupid bitch, Jesus Christ—_

***

“_—_turn that ear-splitter off, would you?” asks Toni, and Cheryl smacks her hand around on the bedside table. She stares at the phone in her grip, still making that _goddamn noise_, and holds it like she would to snap a pencil.

“Um,” says Toni, and Cheryl makes a frustrated sound. She thought these things were supposed to be _easy_ to bend, what the fuck kind of false-journalism is that? She yells, tosses the phone to her left, where it sails through the air and lands next to Toni’s feet.

Toni looks at her. “So… not a morning person, then. Noted.”

***

Cheryl actually _walks_ to Pop’s. She walks from the goddamn _Southside,_ in _no shoes_, all the way to Pop’s, just because she fancies some goddamn fruit toast. The bell jingles over her head, and her teeth are chattering, because it’s November and her legs have long since turned blue and all she has on is Toni’s t-shirt. A weird, detached part of her is kind of curious to see just how long it’ll take for someone to say something, but so far nobody has, unless you count that stupid trucker who beeps his horn at her in the mornings.

Cheryl hesitates in the threshold, feeling self-conscious. It had seemed kind of defiant, initially, traipsing through town in her underwear and no shoes. Like, yeah, fuck you, I’m Cheryl Blossom, I’m a mess, what are you going to do about it? Now she just feels… exposed. Raw. It’s harder to pretend being a mess is something to be proud of when your whole body’s shaking.

“Oh my god, _Cheryl?_” it’s Veronica, which, huh. Turns out this might have been a worthwhile information gathering experience after all. This must be where her and Betty go when they don’t have to pick her up, but she convinces them not to go home. Cheryl just blinks at her.

“Jesus _Christ_,” says Veronica, and her cutlery clatters as she drops it on her plate. She runs over to her, swiping her coat off the booth and draping it over Cheryl’s shoulders. “Cheryl, honey, what the _fuck?_”

She puts her hands on Cheryl’s face. They burn. “Pop! Jesus, Betty, help me get her sitting.”

Betty and Veronica manhandle her into a seat next to the heater. Cheryl just tilts her head back, smiling, even when Veronica forcibly tucks Cheryl’s legs up to her chest. Betty covers them with her own coat. “I’m going to— Pop!”

Veronica’s breathing heavily, and the other patrons are looking now, and Cheryl _doesn’t _care. She giggles. Veronica forces her to look her in the eyes.

“I’m getting Pop, okay, Cheryl? Betty’s right here, I’m just over there, you’re okay—“

She disappears. Betty tucks the two coats more firmly around her, strokes her face and neck.

“What the _fuck_, Cheryl,” she murmurs, and Cheryl tips her head forward, resting it against her chest. Betty hugs her close. It’s weirdly nice.

***

“I don’t think you should be here,” says Veronica, later, when Cheryl shows at the Pep Rally. She’s still cold, and she keeps sneezing every five seconds, but she had to literally fight her way out of the hospital to get here, so. It’s not like it matters.

“Hush up, Ronnie,” Cheryl says.

***

—tackle, dodge the bench, twist, drink bottle to his face, get tossed off anyway, grab arm, release, _duck_, hit knee?—

***

“—I’m surprised you didn’t pawn it,” says Cheryl lightly, smiling to show that she’s teasing. The metal points of the spider’s legs are cool on her palm, and it glows blue in the light of the English room’s projector.

“Right,” says Toni back, dryly. “I’m from the Southside, so I must steal all the time.”

“If the shoe fits,” says Cheryl, and Toni rolls her eyes. Cheryl reaches out and grabs her hand.

“Hey—“ Toni stills. “—Thank you. I mean it.”

“You’re welcome,” whispers Toni, staring at their hands. Cheryl prises her fingers open, places the spider in her palm, and then closes her fingers over it. She brings Toni’s hand to her mouth, and kisses it.

“Keep it,” she says. She hasn’t paid attention to Charles Dickens since, oh, maybe the second day, but nevertheless it fades even further into the background when she looks at Toni; at the shine of her lipgloss, the light reflecting in her eyes. Her hand is warm in Cheryl’s and she’s looking at her like—

Cheryl leans forward, and, caring literally _not a jot_ that she’s in English class and surrounded by people on all sides, puts her other hand on Toni’s neck and pulls her into a kiss. Toni gasps against her lips.

But she kisses back.

***

Cheryl gets put in detention. So does Toni. They hold hands under the desk.

***

—grab arm, release, duck, twist, hit knee, get slammed, _fuck_, knife, _shit!_—

***

“Jesus, turn that ear-splitter off, would you?” says Toni, and she’s standing over the bed with a glass of water in one hand and bottle of Tylenol in the other, and Cheryl fumbles for her phone, hitting ‘off’ and chucking it at the same time. She surges up between Toni’s hands, knocking the glass, and plants her lips on hers. Water spills down her side, trickling down her bare thighs, but Cheryl just keeps kissing her, feeling Toni grin against her lips.

The bottle of pills drops to the floor with a rattle, and Toni reaches blindly behind her to put the glass on the desk, and then she grabs Cheryl’s waist with one hand and uses the other to lower them onto the bed, Cheryl’s hands cupping her face. She slips her tongue into Toni’s mouth, and frowns when Toni pulls away with a grimace.

“You taste like alcohol,” she says, nose crinkling, and when Cheryl laughs it’s all breath. Toni rolls off her, collapsing next to her on the bed. Her smile is wide on her face.

“Hi,” says Cheryl, hushed. Her hand rests on Toni’s shoulder, and Toni twists her neck to kiss Cheryl’s fingers.

“Hey yourself,” she says. Her eyes roam over Cheryl’s face, like she’s cataloguing her. “Is it weird that I feel like we’ve done this?”

Cheryl shakes her head. “Not weird.”

Something settles over them, a tentative calm. Maybe, if Cheryl _really_ wanted to, she could call it understanding. It’s a small mercy, but she’s sure now that her re-runs are just overlays of the same day, stacked over one another to form one big picture. It’s getting easier everyday to convince Betty to stay away from home, and her conversations with Toni now always have this undercurrent to them, like the other versions of her are never far from the surface. It’s nice.

“I feel like I keep fucking up,” confesses Cheryl, but unlike usual it doesn’t feel like it’s about to swallow her whole. “I don’t know what to do, Toni.”

Toni frowns, rolls onto her side to better face Cheryl. “You wanna talk about it?”

“I thought I had to— beat him. But I can’t. And the more I think about it, the more I think it’s _me_, it’s something about _me_, and that’s why I can’t get out. But I don’t know how to change.”

“What would you need to?” asks Toni, and Cheryl laughs. She closes her eyes.

“I’m such a bitch,” Cheryl says, grin still on her face, but even that can't twist her words into a joke. “All the time. And not just, like, a bitch. I’m legitimately a psychopath. I don’t care about anyone else. I don’t think I know how.”

Toni intertwines their fingers. Cheryl can feel each of her rings, but they’re not cold, not like she might have expected, not like her spider brooch. They’re warm. It seems everything about Toni is.

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“It is,” says Cheryl. She turns her head, looks Toni in her eyes. “I do things and they hurt people and I don’t care until after, and then it hurts so fucking bad that I think I’m going to die from it, and I keep using you and I’m so sorry, Toni, I really am, but I don’t know how to... it’s all or nothing, and I can’t control it, and the longer it goes on the less I want to.”

“Hey,” says Toni, squeezing her hand. “I think you just proved yourself wrong, okay? If you really didn’t care you wouldn’t feel like this, you wouldn’t analyse it, you know?”

“I say horrible things,” Cheryl says.

“Do you mean them?”

_I was so jealous of them. They just get to fucking do whatever they like, and they’re happy, and they’re living in this perfect fucking fantasy world where they can hold hands and do cutesy nicknames and they don’t have a fucking clue, and I used to think, you know, that they should wake up and smell the roses, that someone was gonna kill them for it, and now they fucking know that because someone _did_!_

“Sometimes.”

“Everyone has ugly thoughts, Cheryl,” says Toni. “At least you’re trying to change them.”

“I’m not doing a good job.”

Toni smiles. “You think you’re supposed to go in a straight line? Decide to do better and magically do it? _Cheryl_. All you can do is be a little bit better than yesterday.”

“I don’t know how,” admits Cheryl, and Toni strokes lines across her palm.

“I think this is a good start.”

***

“I’m a lesbian,” announces Cheryl, loudly, in Kevin’s ear. He jumps.

“Cheryl?” he says, twisting. She wiggles her fingers at him, hoping her smile doesn’t look at nervous as she feels. Kevin opens his mouth slightly, then shuts it, like he can’t decide what to say.

“That’s the first time I’ve said it aloud,” continues Cheryl, and pokes him sharply in the chest, “So you better say something fucking nice about it.”

Slowly, Kevin’s face softens into a grin. “I’m really proud of you, Cheryl.”

Oh. _Oh_. Cheryl feels her face go through something.

“That was— that was _too_ nice, you fucking… _Glee_ knock-off,” manages Cheryl, but Kevin just laughs at her, and then he wraps her in a hug. She grins into his shoulder. When he lets her go, he ruffles her hair up.

“Jesus, you’re such a dad,” says Cheryl, ducking out of his touch, but her face feels like it’s aching. “it’s like having Fred Andrews in here.”

Kevin preens. “I’ll take that compliment,” he says, and Cheryl takes his offered arm, linking hers with his and walking with him all the way to science, a feeling in her chest that she thinks might, finally, be relief.

***

—grab arm, release, duck, twist, hit knee, dodge, hit the knife, _grab_ the knife, _now fucking what?_—

—“Jesus Christ, turn that ear-splitter off, would you?”—

—_I’m still here_, says Jason, _I’m still here, Cheryl, you’re not getting out that easy_—

***

Cheryl finds Jughead on the _bleachers_, even though it is, as Cheryl is _well_ aware, the _middle of fucking winter_. His laptop is propped on his knees, fingers red in the frosty air. On the field, the Bulldogs practice their strategies for the impeding game. Cheryl watches Jughead watch them, follows his gaze when it travels over the field to Archie at the water cooler, chatting with Ginger. She goes and stands next to him, waving the hundred dollar bill in front of his face.

Jughead looks at her from under his beanie. “The hell is this?”

“What’s it look like, Jones?” asks Cheryl, tapping her foot. “Never mind, I suppose you’ve never seen one. It’s a hundred dollars. I’m giving it to you.”

Jughead doesn’t look impressed. Like, at all.

“I don’t want your charity, Cheryl,” he says, bitter. Cheryl rolls her eyes. Okay, so she’s being better. Surely she doesn’t have to be _nice_ about it all the time.

“It’s not _charity_,” she repeats, snippily. “I’m redistributing my wealth.”

Jughead barks a laugh. Cheryl feels weirdly proud.

“Just take it, Jughead,” she says, and leans down to tuck it into the inside pocket of his Serpent jacket. He looks kind of surprised that she knows it’s there, which she guesses is fair. He, after all, doesn’t know that she has first hand experience with Toni’s. She smacks a kiss to his cheek before she straightens up, and Jughead goes bright red, which is funny.

“I don’t like you, Jughead,” she says, chewing on her lip. “Your dad helped cover up my brother’s murder. But. I know a little something about shitty parents. And.”

Cheryl inhales, cold air travelling down into her lungs, like a cleansing breath. “And I don’t want people judging me on my parents merits, anymore. So I’m… trying to do the same.”

Jughead considers her. “I still think you’re up to something.”

She pats his shoulder. “Fine. You think that. Good luck with your novel, or whatever.”

***

—hit the knife, grab the knife—

***

“You can’t bully me anymore,” says Cheryl, hands clenched around the back of the armchair. “Don’t you get it, Mother? I’m _done_. I’m _better_ than you, and you’re twisted fucking psyche, and you don’t _control_ me, not anymore—“

“_Cheryl_,” admonishes her mom, withered hands pressed neatly on her knees. “Darling, are you having an episode? Take a sleeping pill, dear, you _know_ you don’t mean any of this—“

“I fucking _do_, Mom,” says Cheryl, and she _does_, and it’s so _freeing. Fuck_ her mother. “I’m sick of living with you in this _house_, I _hate_ you. I’m—I’m— I’m _moving out! Yeah!_”

Her mother looks up at her, bored. “And _when_ are you going to do that, Cheryl?” she asks, and Cheryl explodes:

“Saturday!”

***

—hit the knife, grab the knife, duck his swing, _now _where, Jesus—

Cheryl rushes to the other side of the locker room, knife clasped in her sweaty grip, the Black Hood continuing to advance on her. She’s out of breath, but not as much as he is— she guesses Mr Cooper doesn’t hit the gym all that regularly. She points the blade toward him.

“Don’t _fucking_ come near me,” she says, “I’m serious, I am _not_ fucking afraid of you, I will _stab you_ if it means getting out of this day.”

The Black Hood laughs, like she’s amusing, but Cheryl isn’t mucking about.

“I _really _don’t want to have to add murder to my Gothic Heroine legacy, Mr Cooper,” says Cheryl, pushing hair out of her face. He hesitates, possibly thrown by the name, but then he takes another step forward, heavy boots reverberating on the tiled floor.

“Your mother always said you were difficult,” he says, one black glove reaching for her throat, and Cheryl squeezes her eyes tight shut, and just—

Oh, _Jesus_, oh god oh fuck oh shit oh fuck—

Cheryl opens her eyes, looks at her hand where it’s still wrapped around the handle. At where the knife disappears into the Black Hood’s chest. Only half of it’s gone in, because as it turns out, pushing a knife into someone is a _lot_ harder than it’s made to seem on TV, but _still_. Bile rises in her throat, and she drops her hold, stepping backward until her back collides with the lockers.

“Oh my god,” whispers Cheryl, as he grunts. She feels lightheaded. “Oh my god—"

The Black Hood wraps his hands around the handle, and tugs. Blood gushes out. Cheryl feels sick.

“I’ve got a job to do, Cheryl,” he grunts, breathing laboured, and Cheryl shakes her head. The knife makes a graceful arc through the air. It doesn’t quite miss Cheryl’s throat.

Cheryl gasps and grabs her neck, feeling the warmth of her blood flow out over her hand, run down the length of her body. She grabs the collar of his shirt with her free hand, his own breath a wheezing rattle, and clenches her hand around _his_ throat, for once. Her nails dig into the fabric.

“Not so fucking fast,” she grits out, and stares into his dumb, beady little eyes. “I’m _winning_, you sadistic motherfucker. I’m _winning—"_

_Ooh, Cheryl, _says Jason, and bobs up and down on his toes the way he used to, whenever he had something particularly exciting to share. _Cherry Bomb, look at _you. _You always were tougher than Dad said, he’s going to be so proud. We’re so proud of you, Cheryl. My little sister—_

_I’m half a minute older than you,_ hisses Cheryl, in her head, and Jason says: _You’re a lot older than that. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, opening my laptop to write my history assignment, cursor drifting casually to my writing folder instead: ah, fuck
> 
> in case i need to say it! this chapter is VERY choppy and thats deliberate but even though its implied i just wanted to make one thing clear so we’re all on the same page: every time we switch to a different day, you can assume that that day follows the general gist we’ve established, and also that cheryl dies at the end of it. its just, you know. i dont need to hash it all out for u each time, we've been doing this for nearly 40k words. i think its time we END this sucker!


	14. friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: oh yeah so this is definitely the second to last chapter, for sure, i can get it all out in a reasonable number of words  
this chapter, pushing 4000 words with at least another 2500 to go: yeah, um, no can do

Cheryl closes her eyes, blood sticky between the fingers on her neck, Jason’s voice in her ear. She doesn’t know if he disappears, but at least this way she doesn’t have to look at him. White light pulses through her eyelashes, blinding, and cold settles around her, permeating her skin and sinking its teeth into her bones.

_You’re nearly there, baby girl,_ says Veronica, and Cheryl sees her face through smeared vision, a streak of black on white. Her eyes flutter, and it’s _familiar_, and Cheryl’s so _cold_, the temperature pressing on her skin like water before it drains away, pooling around her feet. She opens her eyes—

—and she’s in Toni’s bedroom, wrapped up safe and warm in her bed. Cheryl swallows the bitter sting of disappointment, and tells herself that this is good. She doesn’t want to die, anymore, not even if it means getting out of Friday. It’s a new, novel feeling, to want to live. She thinks its partly out of spite— she doesn’t want the Black Hood winning, not after all of this, and if she has to survive to prove him wrong she’ll fucking _do it_— but maybe, also, it’s because she finally _wants_ something.

Cheryl releases a breath, and holds her hands up in front of her face, examining her palms.

She’d _killed_ him.

For the first time in, _Jesus_, Cheryl doesn’t even know anymore, she’d actually hurt him. For the first time ever, she thinks she might actually have a shot.

“Holy shit,” whispers Cheryl, to herself. Her pulse thrums under her skin, so bright and _alive_ that she can actually feel it in her chest, and then she flings herself out of bed, jumping up and down a little. “Holy shit holy _shit!_”

She tosses Toni’s covers off her so they puddle on the floor with her clothes, and rushes to the bedroom door, desperate to see Toni, to tell her it fucking _worked_.

“Toni!” she cries, smile huge, her feet skidding on the floors. “Toni Toni Toni!”

Toni is in the kitchen, pills and an empty glass on the countertop, one hand on the kitchen tap. She looks over in surprise as Cheryl bursts in, and then Cheryl throws her arms around her, obscuring her face.

“I did it!” she yells, clutching her tight. “Toni, I did it.”

Toni hugs her back, lifting her off the floor a little, her arms wrapped around Cheryl’s waist. She laughing when Cheryl finally relaxes her hold, face lit up and eyes crinkling at the corners. She has a little bit of glitter, probably from _Innuendo_, smudged under her eyebrow. Cheryl beams at her.

“You’re a _genius_,” she says, and smacks a loud kiss to Toni’s forehead, cradling her face with her hands. “Thank you.”

Toni laughs at her, stroking Cheryl’s back through her borrowed shirt. “You’re cheerful this morning,” she says, hands warm and soft and sure on Cheryl’s body, and Cheryl is so _happy_. “I thought you’d have more of a hangover.”

Cheryl shakes her head, brushes her thumbs across Toni’s cheeks. “I can do it, Toni. I actually think I can do it.”

“Do what?”

Cheryl just shakes her head. “Thank you for taking such good care of me. I have to go and do the same for my friend right now, but can I call you later? Or see you at school?”

“Sure, Cheryl,” says Toni. “Of course.”

Cheryl kisses her forehead one last time, then dashes back to the bedroom, hiking her skirt over her legs and grabbing her phone and keys from the bedside table. Like she has the last few rounds, she leaves her spider brooch behind, touching her fingertips to it only once before hurrying out of Toni’s bedroom. She has one hand on the front door handle, the other pulling up Veronica’s number, when Toni stops her.

“Hey,” says Toni, and Cheryl turns back around. Toni tilts her head at her, like she’s not quite sure where her thoughts are coming from. “I’m really proud of you, Cheryl.”

Cheryl pauses, mouth dry. Her lips twitch. “I— thank you. Thanks, Toni.”

Then, on impulse: “Have breakfast with me?”

Toni raises her eyebrows. “What about your friend?”

“She can come,” answers Cheryl, immediately. Her heart feels light at the thought of them all together in Pop’s. “I think it would be— good?”

Toni shrugs, a bemused little smile on her face. “Okay. Sure. Let’s get breakfast.”

***

“Baby girl!” coos Veronica, delighted, when Cheryl makes the call. “How was your night?”

Cheryl spares a glance for Toni, who’s busy putting her makeup on in the bathroom. From her vantage point on Toni’s bed, she can see her reflection in the mirror and, therefore, the face Toni’s making as she swipes mascara over her lashes. Cheryl smiles.

“Really good, Ronnie,” she says, biting down on her thumb nail to keep her grin from getting _too_ wide. “It was… really good. Turns out having a party on a school night wasn’t as disastrous as I thought it’d be.”

Bar the whole, you know, getting stuck in a time-loop situation. But Veronica doesn’t need to know about that.

“It _was_ my birthday,” agrees Ronnie, wistful. “So what’s up, buttercup? Kinda thought you’d still be nursing a hangover at this hour.”

“I was hoping you’d come pick me up,” says Cheryl, a little nervously. She holds her breath. “I’m, um. In the Southside.”

Veronica squawks. “The _Southside? Cheryl!_ Are you okay? Of course, I’m coming right now—“

Cheryl laughs. “I’m fine, Ronnie, I promise. I’m with Toni. I thought maybe we could go get breakfast? Think of it as my birthday treat to you.”

“_Tony_, huh?” says Veronica, and Cheryl imagines the waggle of her eyebrows she always employs when she says this. “Hm, I’m intrigued. Do Pop’s serve breakfast mimosas or should I bring my own?”

Cheryl smiles, listens to Betty’s voice on the other end of the line. Veronica huffs.

“My girlfriend informs me I’m not allowed to consume alcohol in Pop’s unless I want him to go out of business. Unfortunate.” Veronica lets out a dramatic, put upon sigh. “Where are you, Cheryl? We’re literally leaving right now to come and get you.”

***

“Soooo,” says Toni, drawing out the sound. She rocks back and forth on her toes, hands in the pockets of her serpent jacket. “Is this a date?”

Cheryl feels herself go red. They’re waiting in Toni’s lounge room for Veronica to text that she’s arrived, and it’s… kind of awkward. Just a bit.

“Um,” says Cheryl. “I mean, Betty and Veronica will be there, so…”

Toni raises an eyebrow. Her Doctor Martens have mis-matched laces in them. “Well, _they’re_ going out. You’ve never heard of a double date?”

Cheryl pulls a face at her. “Of course I’ve heard of a double date, I’m not a savage. I just wasn’t sure you’d… I mean.” She swallows, huffs a breath. “Why the fuck is this so difficult?”

Toni laughs at her, and steps into Cheryl’s space. “Why’s _what_ so difficult?”

Cheryl gestures between them. “This! I’m not— I don’t know how—“

Pressing her lips together, Toni tilts her head at her, a smile threatening to break out across her face. “It’s pretty easy, bombshell. You go home with a girl, ask her out for breakfast, and manage not to turn all cave-man when she asks if it’s a date.”

“Jesus,” mutters Cheryl, avoiding her eyes. She feels all hot under the collar (the collar which belongs, incidentally, to Toni’s t-shirt, because Cheryl’s gotten used to wearing it), wondering if Toni’s always this confident or if it’s the side effect of a month’s worth of loops in which Cheryl has been quite obviously very, _very_ into her. She hopes its the latter. Kind of. It is fun to not be one step ahead of everyone _all_ the time.

She pulls herself together, straightening out her spine and looking pointedly out the window, hoping she looks bored. “It’s not a date unless they pay for your meal. And since it’s Veronica’s birthday, breakfast’s on me. So. You work it out.”

“You’re going on a date with Veronica?”

“Oh _hush_, Toni.”

***

“So _this_ is something we’ve never done before,” says Veronica cheerfully, plucking a menu from the stand with a flourish. She flicks through it, bypassing the food to go straight for the caffeinated drinks. “Toni, I’m so sorry you have to meet me when I’m not my usually delightful self. Cheryl _neglected to mention_ the full details of our breakfast event.”

Across the table, Cheryl glares at her. Toni looks between them.

“If I’m imposing…” she says, like she’s trying to figure out the dynamic.

“Not at all, Toni,” declares Cheryl, and places their menus in front of them with much firmer action than is really necessary. “Veronica has _no idea_ what she’s insinuating.”  
  
When Cheryl had reached the car, Toni in tow, quite obviously wearing her shirt and kind of regretting it at that point, Veronica had looked at her, tilted down her sunglasses, and said: _So, _Toni_, huh? _And Cheryl had at that point decided that giving Veronica this sort of leverage over her was a truly bad idea.

“Be nice to Cheryl, Vee,” chides Betty, half-hearted, which is a shock. _Any_ positive interaction with Betty is a shock. Her smile turns more warm as she sends a conspiratorial look Toni’s way. “Don’t mind Ronnie. _Someone_ drank too much at her birthday party.”

Toni grins, and nudges her thigh against Cheryl’s. Across the booth, Veronica flicks Betty’s arm without looking up from her menu. “Oh, I know the type. Cheryl was like a baby giraffe on ice by the end of the night.”

“Uh!” Cheryl slaps at her arm. “Traitor, I was not.”

Toni sticks her tongue out. “Were too. Hurry up and order, I want food. What am I having this morning?”

“Fruit toast and hot chocolate,” answers Cheryl, without thinking. She scans her own menu, then decides to stick with Archie’s recommendation of the breakfast burger. It really is very good, and she hasn’t eaten it in a while, not since she was last here with Toni.

Toni folds up her menu, looking pleased with herself. “God, that sounds perfect. I’ve got such good taste.”

“Why you took me home,” chimes Cheryl, and gives a self-satisfied smile, and Toni laughs out loud. She takes Cheryl’s menu from her, closes it up, and puts them both back in the stand. Then she drapes her arm over the back of the booth, kind of like she’s putting it around Cheryl’s shoulders.

Betty and Veronica are staring at them. That’s not too bad, but Betty looks _proud_ of her. And Cheryl doesn’t even feel that repulsed by it. This time-loop’s messing with her entire sense of self.

Like a shark, Veronica latches onto the tidbit of information Toni dropped, her old New-York gossiping ways clearly not entirely dormant.

“_So_,” she declares_,_ “you met at my party?”

Toni nods, her smile softening. Cheryl thinks it’s incredible that she made it do that.

“Kinda feels like I’ve known you a lot longer, though. But we ran into each other at _Innuendo_ last night— great job on the strip pole, by the way,” she adds, to Betty, with a mock-lascivious raise of her eyebrows. A surge of vindication grips Cheryl.

“I knew it!” she yells, as Betty puts her head in her hands, blushing all the way down to the collar of her pink sweater. Veronica looks delighted. “I _fucking_ knew it, you liar! Ha! Call my memory bad…”

“Shut _up_,” whines Betty. “I don’t ever wanna be reminded of that, oh my god. It was so embarrassing. I wasn’t even _drunk_.”

They eat their breakfast, trading stories, and Cheryl feels so— _pleased_, that Veronica and Betty seem to love Toni, and that Toni keeps giving her winks and nudging her shoulders, and she feels like this could be any other Friday, and that is so_, so_ nice, and so, _so_ welcome.

“What are you doing differently today, Cheryl?” asks Veronica, at one point, distracted while she checks her Instagram. Cheryl fumbles with her fork (yes, she eats her burger with a knife and fork, it’s only 40% to annoy Jughead), and it clatters against her plate.

“Pardon?”

“What are you doing today?”

Cheryl places her cutlery down, mulling the question and her answer over before coming to a conclusion. She wants to end her time-loop, she’s sure of that. She’s wanted that this entire time, but it feels different now. She doesn’t just want out of the loop, she wants _in_ for Saturday, and Sunday, and the rest of her life. She thinks that’s the key — in some weird way, going through hell has just made her come out wanting to live. And after finally managing to hurt the Black Hood last night, she feels like getting out might finally be a possibility.

“I’m not sure,” she begins. Toni and Betty have been talking enthusiastically about a new Blue & Gold article, something Betty wants photos for, but they slow down and turn their attention to Cheryl, in a way that feels deliberate, anticipatory. She still doesn’t know quite how much carries over each loop — it seems to be moments of emotional significance, but she’s never actually _tested_ that theory before.

“I had this really weird dream last night,” she continues, watching their faces. “Actually, I had it, like, six times, like it was repeating. I was at the Pep Rally, and the Black Hood was there, waiting for me. He killed me. But then I kept having the dream again, or like— rewinding? Like every time I died I rewound and had to try again. Over and over.”

Veronica’s eyebrows knit together. Toni’s hand slips from the back of the booth to between Cheryl’s shoulders, rubbing circles there.

“Jesus, Cheryl,” says Betty, horrified. “Are you alright?”

Cheryl nods. “I woke up feeling really weird, though. Maybe it was the alcohol? Did… any of _you_ have weird dreams?”

Toni’s hand stops making circles, which Cheryl registers, but her gaze is mostly on Ronnie and the furrow of her brow.

“I did, actually.” It’s Betty. She looks down at her hands, tracing her cuticles with one thumbnail. “I don’t really remember it. I was driving down Main St, like you do to get to the Southside? And the people in the car kept changing but I kept driving. Ronnie was there, all the time, and you were there too, Cheryl.”

She blinks, shakes her head, and pulls a face. “I don’t know, it wasn’t like yours. I just remember feeling really strange when Ronnie told me where we were picking you up this morning. Like I… knew it was coming? Deja-vu, I guess.”

She shrugs, and Cheryl files this information away as Betty flexes out her hands. She looks at Veronica. “What about you, Vee?”

Veronica sits up a little straighter, an incredulous expression on her face. “Okay, well, this is so weird, ‘cause I _also_ dreamed I was at the Pep Rally. But I was running to the lockers across the oval, and I couldn’t get there. Every time I looked up it was further and further away, and I just knew I _needed_ to get there. Like, matter of life-and-_death_ needed.”

Cheryl’s heart starts to beat a little faster, and she turns to Toni. Veronica and Betty’s dreams are spooky, but vague. It would make sense that if anyone were to have a clearer idea, then it would be Toni, given that she’s witnessed more of them and had more emotionally involved loops. She holds her breath.

“Um,” says Toni. “I dreamed I was fucking Bill Murray.”

They break out into stunned laughter, Toni along with them, and the tensions breaks. Veronica leans forward in interest, nose scrunching up with equal parts disgust and delight.

“Like, _Ghostbusters_ Bill Murray?” she says, and then wiggles her eyebrows. “Did he _cross_ your _streams_?”

Betty groans, and Cheryl crumples up her napkin to toss at Veronica’s head.

“Shut up, Ronnie,” she says, and ignores the weird look Toni’s fixing on her. She feels disappointed, but also relieved, glad Toni’s not walking around with any of her memories, not even in her subconscious. She fingers the receipt the waitress dropped off with their food, and puts on a show.

“I suppose none of you ragamuffins are getting this?”

“I drove!”

“It’s my birthday!”

“I’m not putting out if you don’t.”

The last one is from Toni, the rascal, and Cheryl pulls a face at her even as her cheeks go warm.

“Figures,” she sniffs, and gets up to go and settle the bill, “You’re all a bunch of cheapskates.”

They boo her good-naturedly, but Cheryl’s only been at the counter two seconds before Toni appears beside her, grin on her face and cheeks a little flushed. She sidles up much closer than is really necessary, one hand resting on the countertop next to Cheryl’s.

“Hello,” says Cheryl, stupidly. “It’s fine, I was only teasing, I don’t mind getting it.”

Toni smiles even wider. Cheryl really doesn’t understand what it is about her that amuses Toni so much, but she supposes she can’t complain. It doesn’t feel like she’s being laughed _at_. “Oh, yeah, no, you’re gonna have to. I have _zero_ cash with me, on account of someone promising to pay for my food. But I thought you and I could settle it another way.”

Cheryl angles towards her. “Oh?”

Toni tilts her head, and walks two fingers across the countertop to slide her hand over Cheryl’s. Pop must have the thermostat cranked high as can be, because Cheryl feels punch-drunk and tingly and it’s not because of Toni, not at all, no siree. “How about a kiss?”

It’s simple, light, easy enough for Cheryl to deny, and Toni must know that. But Cheryl doesn’t _want_ to deny it. She’s _sick_ of denying herself things.

“Okay,” she whispers, aware that her happiness must be showing on her face. Toni’s eyes flick to her lips.

“You got a hell of a smile, bombshell,” she says, and reaches up on her tip-toes, one hand still on Cheryl’s and the other coming up to cup her cheek. She presses a soft, feather-light kiss to Cheryl’s lips, unlike any of the others they’ve shared. She pulls back with a smile, and Cheryl swears her lips are tinted red.

“Think that’ll do it?”

Cheryl shakes her head. “Another wouldn’t go astray.”

Toni squeezes her hand. “Well, you’ll just have to wait ’til tomorrow, then. I hear people kiss at the ends of dates.”

_Okay_, thinks Cheryl. _Yeah_. “I can do that. Tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU if you left a comment on the last chapter, i love you. i was going to reply but i feel like doing so after 2 months is poor form. but i love you all and i read them all and they all make my heart go ❣️❣️❣️ 
> 
> i am TRYING to finish this fic i swear i will im just so sick of death scenes and only want to write about them all goofing off at pops :/// but i WILL finish it i promise and i WILL do it by the end of may. can you believe i've worked on this for 6 months..... insanity


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